Customer Sustainment Engineer -open level (R5502)

The role

You will own Tier 1 customer support for Hivemind software after it reaches customers and operational teams. You will troubleshoot issues, separate product defects from configuration problems, and escalate depot-level cases to engineering with complete evidence.

What you will do

• Own Tier 1 customer support and incident coordination from first report to confirmed resolution.
• Gather logs, telemetry, versions, configuration and reproduction steps to understand each issue.
• Troubleshoot Hivemind software, APIs, licensing, deployments, networks and integrations.
• Separate product defects from configuration, environment, integration, training and feature-request problems.
• Resolve common problems, handle appropriate Tier 2 work, and reproduce complex failures in lab or test environments.
• Escalate Tier 3 and depot-level issues with impact, evidence, likely causes and work already attempted.
• Give customers clear updates, practical next steps and technically sound workarounds.
• Support releases, upgrades, onboarding, licensing and provisioning, and the move into ongoing sustainment.
• Turn recurring issues into troubleshooting guides, known-issue records, diagnostic tools and training material.
• Use incident patterns to suggest improvements to reliability, diagnostics, documentation and release readiness.

Required qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical, military, field-engineering or technical experience.
• 7+ years of hands-on experience supporting fielded, software-enabled systems in customer, operational, test, deployment or sustainment environments.
• Experience with cyber-physical, edge, mission, robotics, autonomy, aviation, defense, industrial-control or similar complex deployed systems.
• Strong troubleshooting across software, Linux, configuration, networking, logs, telemetry, software versions and hardware-adjacent interfaces.
• Record of owning technical issues from an incomplete initial report through diagnosis and resolution.
• Ability to read and reason about modern C++ and use Python, Bash or similar scripts for troubleshooting and log analysis.
• Clear written and verbal communication with customers, operators and engineers, including in time-sensitive situations.
• Ability to write incident records, troubleshooting guidance, escalations and customer updates.
• Sound judgment within security, export-control, safety, customer-site, contractual and data-handling requirements.
• Ability to possess a Secret DoD security clearance when customers require it.

Nice to have

• Experience with autonomy software, robotics, unmanned systems, aviation, defense or mission software, ground-control software, SDKs, APIs or edge-deployed systems.
• Experience supporting fleet operations, operational-readiness events, flight or ground test campaigns or customer-site deployments.
• Familiarity with DoD sustainment and intermediate- and depot-level maintenance concepts.
• Hands-on C++ software engineering and Python tools for diagnostics, automation or data analysis.
• Familiarity with software releases, configuration baselines, upgrade validation, rollback and version compatibility.
• Experience with licensing, provisioning, offline or air-gapped environments, edge compute, time synchronization, networking or telemetry analysis.
• Experience with Jira, Azure DevOps, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Zendesk, Confluence or similar tools.
• Military, operator, maintainer, field-service, mission-support or customer-engineering experience.
• Active or prior security clearance.

Benefits

• Bonus
• Benefits (for full-time regular employees)
• Equity (for full-time regular employees)
• Temporary benefits package applicable after 60 days of employment (for temporary employees)

Before you apply

• Offers are contingent on a cleared background check and possible reference check.
• A Secret DoD security clearance may be required when customers require it.
• 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.