Staff Electrical Engineer, Hardware Test (R6121)

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 www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube. 

Job Description: Shield AI is seeking a Staff Electrical Engineer to define and lead the electrical test-equipment strategy that enables X-BAT hardware to move from rapid development through qualification, integration, and sustained operation. The Hardware Test Engineering team builds the multidisciplinary systems used to characterize, stress, verify, and troubleshoot mission-critical aircraft components and subsystems. You will be the technical authority for a portfolio of electrical test capabilities rather than a single stand or project. You will establish common architectures, engineering standards, safety practices, and lifecycle expectations; align capability roadmaps with program risk and verification needs; and lead the most ambiguous or consequential test-equipment efforts from concept through deployment. Your influence will extend into aircraft design through design-for-testability, interface definition, reliability learning, and closed-loop corrective action. This is a hands-on staff individual-contributor role with broad organizational reach. You will remain close to schematics, code, hardware, and lab operations while multiplying the effectiveness of other engineers through architecture, reviews, mentorship, reusable platforms, and clear technical decisions. Direct people management is not required. What success looks like Create a coherent test-equipment architecture and roadmap that closes the program's highest-risk verification gaps and supports development, qualification, and recurring test needs. Standardize reusable electrical, software, data, safety, calibration, and documentation patterns that shorten delivery time without weakening rigor. Increase equipment reliability, diagnosability, maintainability, and utilization while reducing recurring failures, manual interventions, and one-off designs. Raise the quality of aircraft requirements and interfaces by making testability, observability, fault isolation, and verification strategy explicit early in design. Develop senior technical talent and create durable practices that allow the organization to deliver more capability through the team rather than through individual heroics.

What you'll do:

Own the technical strategy, architecture, and roadmap for electrical test equipment supporting X-BAT avionics, power, communications, actuation, and other aircraft subsystems.

Identify program verification risks and capability gaps; convert them into prioritized investments, platform decisions, development plans, and clear technical ownership.

Define common architectures for racks, stands, interface units, power and fault insertion, instrumentation, data acquisition, timing, automation, diagnostics, and operator interfaces.

Lead the most complex or novel test-equipment programs through requirements, trade studies, architecture, detailed design, build, integration, acceptance, deployment, and sustainment.

Set and uphold engineering standards for schematics, PCB and harness design, calibration, documentation, and release readiness.

Establish system-safety expectations for energized test equipment, including hazard analysis, safe-state design, interlocks, isolation, emergency stops, access control, and verification of protective functions.

Chair high-consequence architecture, design, and readiness reviews; make or drive closure on cross-domain technical decisions and unresolved risks.

Partner with systems and design engineering to define testabl …