Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, Shield AI’s technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more information, visit

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We are seeking a Director of Systems Engineering & Architecture (SE&A) for Shield AI’s Hivemind Enterprise organization, supporting development of our autonomy platform and development ecosystem for AI Pilots. This leader will oversee Systems Engineering, System Architecture, Cybersecurity Engineering, and Safety/Airworthiness Engineering, building the teams and technical practices needed to deliver dependable, software-intensive autonomous systems.

You will connect operational product needs to measurable requirements, coherent architectures, and credible verification and assurance evidence. Partnering with Product, Software Engineering, Program Management, and Integration and Test teams, you will embed practical engineering rigor throughout the development lifecycle.

What You'll Do:

• Lead the team: Hire, develop, and lead the SE&A engineering disciplines, establishing clear responsibilities, technical standards, and effective cross-functional partnerships.
• Establish the operating model: Define how SE&A engages with product and engineering teams, prioritizes competing demands, and allocates resources. Establish clear decision rights, escalation paths, and risk-proportionate engineering practices that improve delivery without unnecessary process overhead.
• Own requirements and architecture: Guide requirements development and management, system modeling, architectural trade studies, interface definition, traceability, and change impact analysis.
• Drive verification and validation planning: Establish system-level verification and validation strategies, measurable acceptance criteria, and evidence expectations. Partner with integration and test teams to demonstrate end-to-end capability.
• Support software development: Integrate systems engineering and architecture into iterative planning, design, implementation, testing, release readiness, and sustainment.
• Lead integrated assurance: Ensure cybersecurity, safety, and airworthiness considerations shape requirements, architecture, development, and verification from the outset.