Staff Engineer, Shield AI
Electrical
$150-220k
+ Bonus and Equity
Building AI aircraft pilots
Open for applications
Building AI aircraft pilots
1001+ employees
Open for applications
$150-220k
+ Bonus and Equity
1001+ employees
Company mission
To protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems.
Role
Who you are
- You have a B.S. in Electrical Engineering or equivalent
- You have 5+ years of experience as an Electrical Engineer
- You are experienced with: circuit design, schematic capture, component selection, circuit testing, circuit debugging, and system integration
- You have a demonstrated record of working hard, being a trustworthy teammate, holding yourself and others to high standards, and being kind to others
- Familiarity with Altium or equivalent
What the job involves
- Shield AI is seeking an exceptional Electrical Engineer to join the team in building our next-generation autonomous aircraft
- Joining now places you at the earliest stages of development, tackling open-ended design challenges that will shape the future of autonomous flight
- You will collaborate closely with other Electrical Engineers, Mechanical, Thermal, CAD, Hardware Test, Reliability, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, and other cross-functional teams
- This is an opportunity to shape our team processes and own critical aspects of our hardware development
- Own full product and circuit design for flight critical subsystems. This includes analog, digital, high-speed, power, compute, sensors, FPGA, and other functional blocks as needed
- Design for high reliability in challenging environments. Including temperature, altitude, radiation, and vibration
- Full-cycle hardware development: Own the entire flow — concept, modeling, worst case analysis, schematic capture, simulation, prototyping, design reiteration for improving design maturity, testing and validation
- PCB ownership: Drive PCB layout and design with ECAD engineers, optimizing for power density, EMI, thermal, and manufacturability
- Design for Safety, Manufacturability and Reliability: Design robust systems keeping in mind best practices for safety, manufacturing and reliability
- Board Bring Up and Testing: Execute board bring up, verification, validation and HALT testing to meet rigorous aerospace reliability standards
- Cross-functional collaboration: Work closely with Mechanical, CAD, Embedded, Software, Production and various aircraft teams throughout the product lifecycle
- Design review leadership: Lead and contribute to cross-functional reviews ensuring robust, high-integrity engineering decisions
- Program execution: Manage project timelines, deliverables, and technical milestones to drive on-time, high-quality outcomes
- Mentor and lead other engineers supporting your project
Our take
Self-driving vehicles present enormous benefits for the transportation industry, with the potential to increase the safety and efficiency of cars, trucks, and commercial airlines. However, such technological innovation is less present within the military transportation sector, despite the benefits that AI piloting would produce for the operation of drones and aircraft.
Shield AI is developing Hivemind, an AI-driven pilot that can operate drones and aircraft autonomously, without needing GPS, communications, or pilots. In addition to navigation, the technology is also designed to facilitate indoor building clearance, integrated defense breaching, and has the ability to learn and autonomously execute aircraft missions.
Whilst similar AI-driven pilot software has begun to appear in Chinese military research programs, Shield AI's target is the US. By developing fully autonomous piloting integrations for any type of aircraft, the company aims to future-proof the US military without the need for bespoke aircraft design. It has generated massive amounts of funding to support continued scaling and R&D efforts.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 12 rounds)
Mar 2025
$240m
LATE VC
Oct 2023
$300m
SERIES F
Total funding: $1.0bn
Company benefits
- Excellent Medical Coverage
- Mental Health Employee Assistance Program
- Paid Parental Leave
- Pet Insurance
- Flexible Work Hours
- Gym Discount (San Diego)
- Onsite Gym (DC)
- Free Parking
- Competitive Compensation
- 401K Services and Match
- Stock Benefits
Company HQ
Core-Columbia, San Diego, CA
Leadership
Ryan Tseng
(Co-Founder & President)Experience as CEO, CTO and Founder of WiPower from 2006 to 2010. Technical Lead for Wireless Power Program for Qualcomm from 2010 to 2013.
Brandon Tseng
(Co-Founder & President)Naval Officer for the US Navy from 2009 to 2015.
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