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 and X-BAT aircraft, Hivemind Enterprise, and the Hivemind Vision product lines. With 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.
Job Description:
Shield AI’s Hivemind Platform organization is seeking a Principal Systems Engineer to lead and scale systems engineering excellence across our software-intensive, autonomy-driven platform. This role sits within the Systems Engineering, Integration, and Test (SEIT) organization and is responsible for advancing systems engineering discipline, rigor, and cross-functional alignment across the full lifecycle, from requirements definition through architecture, verification, and assurance.
This individual will play a critical role in shaping how complex autonomous system development capabilities are specified, architected, and validated, with a strong emphasis on model-based systems engineering (MBSE), requirements traceability, and integration of system assurance (including safety) into system design.
What You’ll Do:
Systems Engineering Discipline Leadership: Drive the adoption and enforcement of systems engineering best practices across the organization, serving as a technical authority and trusted partner to engineering leadership.
Requirements Management & Traceability: Lead the development of structured, testable, and fully traceable system requirements, ensuring end-to-end linkage across architecture, verification, and implementation.
Architecture Definition: Define and maintain system architectures using MBSE methodologies and tools (e.g., Cameo), promoting model-centric engineering for system understanding and decision-making.
Verification & Validation Planning: Establish comprehensive, executable verification strategies aligned with system requirements and operational use cases, supporting integration and test efforts.
System Assurance Integration: Integrate system safety and security assurance considerations into requirements, architecture, and verification to support mission assurance and compliance objectives.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with software architects, product teams, test engineers, and engineering leadership to align system-level decisions/execution across the organization and bridge between SEIT and the broader engineering organization.
Key Outcomes:
End-to-End Requirements Traceability Established: System requirements are consistently structured, testable, and fully traceable across architecture, implementation, and verification artifacts.
MBSE Adoption at Scale: Model-based systems engineering is broadly adopted, with system architecture and interfaces defined and maintained in a shared, authoritative model.
System Assurance Integrated Early: System safety and assurance considerations are embedded in requirements and architecture upfront, reducing late-stage risk and rework.
Cross-Functional System Alignment Achieved: Software, product, and Integration & Test teams operate with a clear, shared understanding of system architecture, interfaces, and constraints.
Systems Engineering Rigor and Process Maturity Improved: Standardized processes, tools, and artifacts are in place and consistently used across teams, improving quality, predictability, and scalability.
Required Qualifications:
15+ years in Systems Engineering, Architecture, or technical leadership roles
Experience in defense or aerospace, ideally with software-intensive unmanned aircraft systems (UAS)
Strong background in traceable requirements development, system architecture and interface definition, and V&V planning
Hands-on experience with MBSE tools (Cameo Systems Modeler or equivalent) and SysML
Proven ability to lead engineering discipline across teams and influence technical direction
Bachelor’s degree in engineering or related field
Preferred Qualifications:
Experience integrating system safety and assurance practices into engineering workflows
Familiarity with certification standards such as MIL-HDBK-516C and CMMC/NIST SP 800-53
Advanced degree in engineering or related field