Director, Chief Engineering (R4667)
Shield AI
Washington, DC, USA
USD 210k-310k / year + Equity
Posted on Mar 13, 2026
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:
The Chief Engineering Director leads and develops a team of Chief Engineers responsible for technical execution and delivery of software development and integration of Hivemind across multiple customer platforms. Chief Engineers serve as the primary engineering interface for their assigned projects and are responsible for maintaining the technical continuity across all engineering disciplines, ensuring execution on schedule and deliverables that delight the customer.
This role ensures the Chief Engineering team is equipped, aligned, and empowered to define scope, remove technical blockers, manage cross-functional dependencies, identify integration issues, and prevent technical debt before it materializes. The Director drives consistency in how Chief Engineers balance technical rigor, risk, schedule, and cost in close partnership with Program Management.
What you'll do:
- This is a senior leadership role combining technical depth, organizational influence, and people development. Core responsibilities for this role as follows:
- Team Leadership and Development:
- --Manage, mentor, and grow the team serving as project technical authorities on Hivemind Solutions projects
- --Set clear expectations for ownership, decision velocity, and accountability
- --Coach on cross-functional influence, executive communication, and customer-facing leadership
- --Conduct performance reviews and career development planning
- Functional Excellence:
- --Establish and improve Chief Engineering standards, tools, and best practices, including in the areas of scope definition, trade management, technical risk identification and management, project execution, technical integration and problem solving
- --Drive lessons learned and continuous improvement initiatives
- Technical Alignment:
- --Ensure projects maintain a consistent system-level view through integration of project inputs from all applicable engineering disciplines including Flight Systems Integration, Test, Infrastructure, etc
- --Identify interface risks, integration gaps, and technical debt early and prevent downstream churn
- --Promote disciplined decision-making that considers cross-functional interdependencies
- --Facilitate technical alignment through design reviews
- Program Manager Partnership:
- --Ensure Chief Engineers actively assess the impact of technical decisions on risk, schedule, and cost
- --Create clear escalation paths for cross-project technical conflicts
- --Ensure technical risks are surfaced, documented, and mitigated
- --Reinforce the expectation that Chief Engineers proactively steer projects
- --Support proposal development, estimating, and resource planning, coordinating cross-discipline Engineering inputs as a single voice for Engineering to the project
- Culture:
- --Build a collaborative culture where teams are empowered to move fast while remaining technically rigorous
- --Foster a culture of accountability and continuous improvement, reinforcing extreme ownership of outcomes
- --Develop a culture of integrators, listeners, organizers, motivators, and communicators
- --Promote clarity in technical communication and decision rationale
Required qualifications:
- 15+ years of experience in complex technical systems (autonomy, aerospace, defense, distributed software, or similar domains)
- Prior experience as a Chief Engineer, Technical Lead, Project Engineer, or equivalent system-level authority
- Deep cross-functional understanding across software, autonomy, systems engineering, and integration
- Proven experience leading cross-functional teams of senior engineers or technical leaders
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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.
210000 - 310000 USD a year