Director, Avionics Engineering, V-BAT

The role

You will lead and grow a multidisciplinary avionics team covering electrical design, root cause analysis and build/test operations. You will own the reliability of the avionics systems on the V-BAT platform, from field issues to design fixes.

What you will do

• Lead and grow a team of electrical design engineers, root cause analysis engineers and avionics build/test technicians.
• Set team priorities, allocate resources and drive execution.
• Contribute to design development and reviews, and lead hands-on root cause analysis.
• Lead cross-functional failure investigations and verify corrective and preventive actions.
• Build tooling and infrastructure that speed up debugging, test and issue resolution.
• Drive coordination across Supply Chain, Reliability, Manufacturing, Quality and Fleet Support to improve system reliability and availability.
• Set standards, review cadences and metrics such as reliability growth, escape rates and time-to-resolution.

Required qualifications

• B.S. in Electrical Engineering or an equivalent technical field.
• 10+ years of experience, including leading and growing teams of electrical engineers.
• Proven track record of building and scaling high-performing technical teams.
• Experience working cross-functionally across design, supply chain, manufacturing, quality and fleet/field support.
• Proven ability to plan and execute complex electronic and electrical designs in a high-consequence industry (defense, aerospace, automotive or medical device).
• Demonstrated ability to thrive in a fast-paced, high-ownership development environment with rapidly evolving priorities.
• Cleared background and possible reference check.

Nice to have

• M.S. or Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering.
• Experience with structured problem-solving and failure analysis methods such as fault tree analysis, fishbone/Ishikawa diagrams, FMEA/FMECA, 8D or similar.
• Ownership of full product development lifecycles, from concept through release, production ramp, customer sustainment and retirement.
• Experience in UAV/UAS design or other autonomous or unmanned systems.
• Familiarity with reliability engineering practices (reliability growth modeling, MTBF/MTBUR analysis, accelerated life testing).

Benefits

• Bonus.
• Benefits.
• Equity.
• Temporary employees receive a temporary benefits package after 60 days of employment.

Before you apply

• All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check.
• Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits.

About the company

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company that builds intelligent systems to protect service members and civilians. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation technologies.