Senior Engineer, Reliability (R5950)

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: We are seeking a Senior Reliability Engineer to lead reliability engineering activities for the development, integration, testing, and operation of aircraft systems. This position will work across engineering disciplines to establish reliability requirements, manage system reliability budgets, perform reliability analyses, and identify design improvements that increase aircraft availability and mission success. The successful candidate will have direct experience working on aircraft or other complex aerospace systems and be proficient with industry-standard reliability tools and methods. This engineer will serve as the primary reliability point of contact for assigned programs and communicate reliability performance, risks, and improvement plans to engineering leadership and customers.

What you'll do:

Develop and maintain aircraft-level reliability requirements, objectives, and program reliability plans.

Establish, allocate, and manage reliability budgets across systems, subsystems, and line-replaceable units.

Track predicted reliability against program targets and identify components or subsystems driving reliability risk.

Perform reliability predictions using component failure-rate data, operating environments, and mission profiles.

Conduct Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA), Failure Modes, Effects, and Criticality Analysis (FMECA), Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), and Reliability Block Diagram (RBD) analysis.

Support aircraft system safety assessments by providing failure rates, failure modes, and reliability data.

Develop and maintain Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF), Mean Time Between Critical Failure (MTBCF), mission reliability, availability, and related reliability metrics.

Perform reliability allocation, trade studies, sensitivity analyses, and design assessments.

Lead or support Failure Reporting, Analysis, and Corrective Action System (FRACAS) activities.

Analyze ground-test, flight-test, supplier, maintenance, and field-performance data to identify reliability trends.

Apply Weibull analysis and other statistical methods to evaluate failure behavior and predict component life.

Work with design teams to eliminate single-point failures, reduce high-risk failure modes, and improve fault tolerance.

Review supplier reliability analyses, test results, and supporting technical data.

Define reliability demonstration and growth-test requirements, success criteria, and data-collection needs.

Support technical reviews, including SRR, PDR, CDR, TRR, and reliability review boards.

Communicate reliability performance, budget status, assumptions, risks, and recommended corrective actions to customers and program leadership.

Mentor junior engineers and improve organizational reliability processes, tools, and standards.

Required qualifications:

Bachelor’s degree in reliability engineering, systems engineering, aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, or a related technical field.

Typically requires a minimum of 5 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree 

Direct experience supporting aircraft development, integration, testing, sustainment, or operations.

Experience developing and managing reliability budgets at the system, subsystem, or equipment level.

Proficiency with reliability methods such as FMEA/FMECA, FTA, RBD, Weibull analysis, reliability predictions, and FRACAS.

Familiarity with reliability metrics such as MTBF, MTBCF, fail …