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Shield AI, a venture-backed defense-tech company, is seeking a Senior Staff Engineer for Guidance, Navigation & Control (GNC) to build and lead the Ranger G&C team. This is a technical leadership role combining hands-on engineering expertise with team building and program ownership.
Key Responsibilities:
- Build and lead the Ranger G&C team, defining staffing needs, establishing technical ownership, and developing engineers through mentorship and design reviews.
- Own the complete G&C development roadmap, translating program objectives into phased plans for requirements, algorithm maturation, simulation, integration, verification, and flight testing.
- Manage project execution and delivery: scope work, estimate effort, allocate resources, manage schedules and cross-team dependencies, and track progress against deliverables.
- Define and deliver G&C architecture including Auto-Taxi and ATOL algorithms, control laws, guidance, trajectory validation, flight-mode logic, and control allocation.
- Lead integration between flight autonomy and mission autonomy through A-GRA-aligned interfaces, establishing clear responsibilities for decision-making and vehicle execution.
- Develop and validate high-fidelity 6DOF simulation capabilities with defined fidelity requirements and uncertainty bounds.
- Own G&C verification strategy and compliance evidence, defining requirements-based acceptance criteria across analysis, Monte Carlo campaigns, and hardware/software-in-the-loop testing.
- Drive cross-disciplinary trades with propulsion, aerodynamics, actuation, state estimation, embedded software, and autonomy teams.
- Lead G&C preparation and analysis for ground and flight testing, including envelope expansion, pre-flight predictions, and post-flight reconstruction.
Shield AI's products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation technologies, with operations worldwide across the U.S., Europe, Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.
Requirements:
- 10+ years of experience in flight controls, GNC, or autonomous aircraft development with demonstrated technical ownership from requirements through flight test.
- Experience building or leading engineering teams, establishing technical direction, assigning ownership, and mentoring engineers.
- Demonstrated ownership of technical roadmaps and project execution, including work scoping, effort estimation, staffing plans, milestone definition, and dependency management.
- Deep expertise in aircraft flight dynamics, classical and modern control theory, nonlinear systems, and fixed-wing control law design.
- Strong experience developing or validating high-fidelity 6DOF simulations and using ground/flight-test data to identify modeling limitations and improve predictive capability.
- Experience defining and executing requirements-based verification strategies including linear/nonlinear analysis, Monte Carlo studies, integrated testing, and flight-test analysis.
- Experience integrating guidance, control, and flight-mode logic with clear understanding of flight autonomy vs. mission autonomy interfaces.
- Proficiency in C++ with experience implementing, reviewing, and debugging G&C or simulation software; experience with MATLAB and/or Python for engineering analysis.
- Strong technical judgment and communication skills for resolving cross-disciplinary problems and communicating decisions, assumptions, risks, and limitations.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience leading development, integration, or flight verification of autonomous fixed-wing aircraft.
- Direct experience with A-GRA-aligned interfaces or integrating flight autonomy with mission-autonomy providers.
- Experience building G&C team or development capability for new aircraft programs.
- Experience with flight safety, airworthiness processes, and producing simulation descriptions and verification reports.
- Experience evaluating navigation errors, air data uncertainty, altitude-sensing limitations, latency, and data validity against control requirements.
- Experience establishing software/hardware-in-the-loop capabilities, automated regression testing, and CI/CD workflows using Linux, Git, and modern C++.
- Experience integrating NPSS propulsion models into 6DOF simulation environments.
- Experience leading G&C execution in developmental flight-test programs.
