Chief Engineer - Launch & Recovery Vehicle (R4033)

Founded in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed deep-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include the V-BAT aircraft, Hivemind Enterprise, and the Hivemind Vision product lines. With nine offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific, Shield AI’s technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube. 
The Chief Engineer for the Launch & Recovery Vehicle (LRV) leads the technical development, integration, and validation of a mobile launch and recovery system supporting a Group 5 unmanned aerial vehicle. This role acts as the technical authority and product owner, ensuring the LRV meets mission performance, reliability, and safety objectives through disciplined engineering, rigorous testing, and cross-functional integration. You will define what the vehicle must do, how it will do it, and prove that it can — whilemanaging risk and guiding the team through design, analysis, test, and field operations.

WHAT YOU’LL DO:

• Own the technical direction and ensure the product architecture fulfills mission needs and system constraints. 
• Translate user and stakeholder requirements into verifiable system capabilities with defined margins and measures. 
• Lead cross-discipline integration, ensuring mechanical, electrical, software, and test teams deliver a coherent design. 
• Drive risk reduction and test strategy—plan, prioritize, and execute early demos and stress-to-failure tests. 
• Maintain the functional baseline and verify that each subsystem meets its allocated performance and interface requirements. 
• Guide trade studies balancing performance, cost, schedule, manufacturability, and reliability. 
• Ensure analytical models are correlated to test data, closing the loop between simulation and experiment. 
• Control the technical baseline and configuration, approving major design and requirement changes. 
• Chair or support technical reviews (PDR, CDR, TRR) and enforce closure of open actions. 
• Own the risk register, quantify technical and programmatic risk, and ensure mitigation plans are executable and tracked. 
• Serve as the single point of technical accountability to leadership and customers. 
• Define and maintain verification and validation (V&V) plans that trace requirements to tests and results. 
• Communicate technical status using transparent, quantitative metrics on performance, maturity, and uncertainty. 
• Integrate product development with manufacturing and sustainment to ensure designs are buildable and supportable. 
• Foster a disciplined, data-driven engineering culture that values early learning, iteration, and truth-seeking. 

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Physics, or related field (Mechanical/Aerospace ideal). 
• 10+ years leading multidisciplinary engineering teams delivering complex electro-mechanical or automation systems. 
• Proven record of owning system performance from requirements through test and field validation 
• Strong systems engineering discipline — requirements traceability, margins, and verification planning. 
• Skilled in risk-based decision-making and tradeoffs across performance, cost, and schedule 
• Broad technical fluency across mechanical, electrical, software, and controls domains. 
• Experience managing product lifecycle: design, build, integration, and test. 
• Comfortable leading technical reviews (PDR, CDR, TRR, FRR) and closing actions to standard. 
• Effective at cross-functional coordination with manufacturing, test, and operations. 
• Clear communicator — able to translate technical reality to executive and customer audiences.

Full-time regular employee offer package: Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity
Temporary employee offer package: Pay within range listed above + temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)
Salary compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, licenses and certifications, and specific work location. All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check. Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits. Please speak to your talent acquisition representative for more information.
###
Shield AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and i