Senior Director, Systems Engineering
Shield AI
Software Engineering, Sales & Business Development
San Diego, CA, USA · New York, USA · San Diego, CA, USA
Posted on Sep 20, 2025
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.
Shield AI’s Hivemind Product Engineering team is seeking a Senior Director of Systems Engineering to establish and scale mature systems engineering practices across our autonomy product portfolio. This leader will build and formalize the processes, frameworks, and technical approaches that ensure our autonomy stack is delivered with rigor, traceability, and predictability, while enabling our teams to move aggressively and innovate at speed.
Success in this role requires disciplined urgency: the ability to enforce rigor, certification-ready practices, and engineering discipline without slowing down the mission. The Senior Director will be accountable for driving technical excellence while ensuring we can deliver autonomy capabilities on timelines that meet the needs of critical customer missions.
The Senior Director will own the definition of requirements, architecture, verification/validation, and certification-ready processes, with respective Hivemind Product and Engineering teams partnering to support this mandate. This role requires both strategic leadership and hands-on systems engineering expertise, with a mandate to conform our practices to the level expected of safety-critical autonomy products.
A critical dimension of this mandate is embedding cybersecurity into every layer of our processes and products, ensuring that requirements, architectures, and verifications systematically account for cyber resilience alongside safety and airworthiness.
WHAT YOU'LL DO:
- Systems Engineering Function: Define and implement best-in-class systems engineering processes (requirements management, traceability, interface control, architecture, validation/verification)
- Drive Cross-Portfolio Consistency: Create a unified systems engineering framework that spans multiple Hivemind product components
- Enable Certification & Delivery: Ensure processes and documentation are designed to support airworthiness, safety, and cybersecurity, while enabling rapid iteration and delivery
- Lead and Grow Talent: Build and lead a high-performing systems engineering organization, mentoring director and senior engineers
- Collaborate Across Functions: Partner with product management, software, hardware, test, and program leadership to align execution with product goals and timelines
- Own Technical Rigor: Guide trade studies, systems analysis, and design reviews to ensure disciplined decision-making without sacrificing speed
- Champion Tooling & Automation: Implement modern systems engineering tools (e.g., DOORS, Jama, Cameo, JIRA integrations) to drive efficiency in requirements and verification
- Represent Systems Engineering: Act as the primary voice of systems engineering with executive leadership, customers, and industry partners
KEY OUTCOMES:
- Unified Systems Engineering Framework: Establish and deploy a standardized, model-based systems engineering framework adopted across all Hivemind product components
- Accelerated Certification-Readiness: Deliver processes and artifacts that position Shield AI’s autonomy stack for airworthiness, safety, and cybersecurity certification while enabling aggressive development timelines
- Measurable Traceability: Achieve end-to-end requirements traceability from concept through verification, ensuring technical rigor and reducing program risk
- Team Growth & Capability: Build and mentor a systems engineering team recognized for its ability to deliver rigor with startup-level agility
- Tooling Integration: Successfully implement modern systems engineering tools that automate requirements management and verification, cutting cycle time while increasing quality
- Credibility & Influence: Establish Shield AI as a recognized leader in systems engineering discipline, trusted by executive leadership, customers, and industry partners alike
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:
- 15+ years of experience in systems engineering, with at least 5 years in senior leadership roles
- Proven track record of establishing or scaling systems engineering practices in aerospace, defense, or other safety-critical domains
- Deep understanding of model-based systems engineering (MBSE), requirements management, and certification-driven development
- Strong leadership, organizational, and communication skills with the ability to influence across teams
- Demonstrated ability to balance discipline and rigor with urgency and speed, ensuring safety-critical autonomy products are delivered on accelerated timelines
- Bachelor’s degree in engineering or related field
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:
- Experience with multi-domain autonomous systems (air, ground, maritime)
- Familiarity with acquisition processes
- Familiarity with certification standards such as MIL-HDBK-516C, ISO 26262, or equivalent
- Advanced degree in engineering or related field
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.
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Shield AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.