Senior Staff Engineer, Weapons Integration - Ranger

About the role

Shield AI, a defense-tech company building aircraft and autonomy software, is hiring a Senior Staff Engineer, Weapons Integration for its X-BAT program. The engineer owns the technical architecture, development and integration of weapons mission-critical subsystems for an advanced autonomous aircraft, acting as technical authority across mission computing, avionics, payloads, communications and support systems.

Key responsibilities

• Own architecture, requirements development and allocation, and integration strategy across data storage, weapons, payloads, avionics and aircraft systems
• Set performance budgets, interface definitions and verification criteria aligned with vehicle-level objectives
• Lead trade studies and system-of-systems analyses balancing performance, latency, bandwidth, storage, reliability, power, cost and schedule, and resolve architectural conflicts
• Guide integration and verification campaigns from lab and hardware-in-the-loop testing through flight test and fielding
• Partner with safety, airworthiness and certification teams on compliance approaches to applicable MIL Standards
• Lead multidisciplinary technical reviews and readiness assessments, and mentor engineers on requirements quality, interface management, configuration control and verification

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Aerospace, Electrical, Computer or Systems Engineering or a related field, with 10+ years of aerospace or defense experience, including at least 5 years developing and integrating weapons or complex aircraft mission systems
• Demonstrated ownership of mission system architectures and experience turning operational needs into requirements, performance budgets and specifications
• Experience leading multidisciplinary teams and supplier engineering from architecture through integration, test and fielding
• Strong technical communication and influencing skills
• Active U.S. Secret clearance and ability to obtain and maintain a Top Secret clearance

Required skills

• Systems engineering: requirements decomposition, architecture trade studies, interface management, configuration control, technical risk management, verification and validation
• Modular Open Systems Approach and frameworks such as Open Mission Systems, Government Reference Architectures or modular avionics standards
• Support for safety and airworthiness compliance involving DO 178C and DO 254 objectives

Preferred: Master's or PhD in a relevant engineering field, hands-on flight test and mission system validation experience, direct experience integrating advanced sensors, autonomy, AI-enabled payloads or guided weapons, background in MBSE and SysML, knowledge of aircraft mission systems vendors, and an active DoD Top Secret clearance.