What you'll do:
- Partner closely with senior and executive-level stakeholders to understand business objectives, growth plans, and capability gaps.
- Translate market entry and growth plan into scalable, data-driven regional talent acquisition strategies.
- Act as a thought partner and advisor on talent trends, market intelligence, and competitive hiring strategies.
- Advise leaders on market feasibility from a talent perspective (availability, cost, timing, and risk).
- Own the end-to-end recruitment lifecycle for all roles including senior, critical, and hard-to-hire roles.
- Partner to design and execute sourcing strategies that attract high-impact engineering and commercial talent across the EMEA region
- Shape local hiring approaches while maintaining a consistent global hiring bar.
- Act as an EMEA ambassador for our employer brand, ensuring we are positioned as an employer of choice in the region
- Partner with Branding, Comms, and Leadership to shape and localise our employer value proposition for different EMEA countries.
- Identify and activate employer branding opportunities (events, content,
communities, referrals, social presence). - Ensure inclusive, consistent, and authentic candidate experience that reinforces our brand and values at every touchpoint.
- Use data to forecast hiring needs, track progress, and continuously optimise our recruitment performance.
- Improve TA processes, tools, and ways of partnering to support speed, quality, and scale.
- Be a visible voice for talent across the EMEA leadership community.
Required qualifications:
- Proven experience as a strategic talent acquisition partner driving full cycle hiring for both engineering and go to market talent within the defence space or Public Sector Saas space.
- Demonstrated success supporting new market entries and scaling teams at pace, in particular the Middle East region.
- Strong credibility working with senior leaders and executives as a trusted talent advisor and business partner.
- Deep understanding of EMEA talent dynamics, sourcing strategies, and competitive intelligence.
- Highly consultative, commercially minded, and comfortable operating with ambiguity.
- Ability to balance strategic thinking with hands-on execution.
Skills Required
- Proven experience as a strategic talent acquisition partner driving full-cycle hiring for engineering and go-to-market roles in defence or public sector SaaS.
- Demonstrated success supporting new market entries and scaling teams rapidly, particularly in the Middle East region.
- Credibility working with senior leaders and executives as a trusted talent advisor and business partner.
- Deep understanding of EMEA talent dynamics, sourcing strategies, and competitive intelligence.
- Highly consultative, commercially minded, and comfortable operating with ambiguity.
- Ability to balance strategic thinking with hands-on execution and own end-to-end recruitment lifecycle.
What the Team is Saying
Shield AI Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Healthcare Strength — Healthcare coverage includes medical, dental, vision, and mental-health support, with company materials describing excellent coverage. Feedback suggests these offerings are comprehensive and consistently highlighted across official and third-party benefit lists.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Equity is granted to all full-time hires, with RSU structures and tools like Carta Tax intended to improve understanding and tax timing. Feedback suggests this broad-based ownership approach is a notable component of total rewards.
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Parental & Family Support — Benefits include paid parental leave, fertility support, childcare benefits, family medical leave, and onsite resources such as a Mother's Room. Feedback suggests the family-oriented offerings are more expansive than basic coverage.
Shield AI Insights
What We Do
At Shield AI, you won't wait years to see your work reach the field. You'll build hardware and software that operates in the real world right now, in the hands of the people who depend on it. Hivemind, our AI pilot, has been flying since 2018. It has flown more than 30 platforms, including an F-16, and it now sits under a U.S. Air Force production contract for Collaborative Combat Aircraft. When you write code or shape a system here, you contribute to technology with a proven flight record and a clear production future. V-BAT flies intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions with an operational record that stretches from Ukraine to the Indo-Pacific. It delivers eyes where they matter most, in the most demanding conditions on earth. The teams behind it watch their work get tested where the stakes are real. X-BAT takes its first flight this year. It's an AI-piloted fighter that needs no runway, built to operate where traditional aircraft can't. Join now and you help shape a program at its earliest, most formative stage. That's the kind of ground-floor work that defines a career. Do the most impactful work of your life, on problems that matter. Autonomy at this level asks a lot of you. You'll take on problems in perception, planning, and control that few teams anywhere are equipped to solve. You'll work across disciplines, from aerospace and robotics to machine learning and systems engineering, alongside people who hold themselves to an exacting standard and expect the same from you. Our mission is clear: protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems. That purpose runs through every decision, every design review, and every deployment. It's why the work here carries a weight you can feel. Ready to join our mission? Explore our open roles and find where you fit.
Why Work With Us
Founded in 2015 by a former Navy SEAL, Shield AI builds AI pilots and uncrewed aircraft. Veterans aren't an afterthought here, they're at every level. It's why the work carries weight: AI pilots and uncrewed aircraft flying real missions, from Ukraine to the Indo-Pacific, protecting service members and civilians.
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Shield AI Teams
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Shield AI Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
