SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company developing autonomous systems, aircraft, and simulation technologies for military and civilian applications. The company seeks a Staff Electrical Engineer to define and lead the electrical test-equipment strategy for X-BAT aircraft hardware, enabling progression from rapid development through qualification, integration, and sustained operation.
You will serve as the technical authority for a portfolio of electrical test capabilities across multiple programs and projects. Your responsibilities include establishing common architectures, engineering standards, safety practices, and lifecycle expectations; aligning capability roadmaps with program risk and verification needs; and leading complex 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.
Key responsibilities include: owning technical strategy and roadmap for electrical test equipment supporting X-BAT avionics, power, communications, actuation, and subsystems; identifying program verification risks and converting them into prioritized investments and development plans; defining common architectures for racks, stands, interface units, power and fault insertion, instrumentation, data acquisition, timing, automation, diagnostics, and operator interfaces; leading complex test-equipment programs through requirements, trade studies, architecture, detailed design, build, integration, acceptance, deployment, and sustainment; setting and upholding engineering standards for schematics, PCB and harness design, calibration, documentation, and release readiness; establishing system-safety expectations for energized test equipment including hazard analysis, safe-state design, interlocks, isolation, emergency stops, and verification of protective functions; chairing high-consequence architecture and design reviews; partnering with systems and design engineering to define testable requirements and verification approaches; developing strategies for equipment reliability, availability, maintainability, calibration, obsolescence, and spares; leading cross-functional root-cause investigations; making build-versus-buy decisions and providing technical direction to vendors and integrators; defining and using meaningful operating metrics; and mentoring senior and developing engineers.
Success means creating a coherent test-equipment architecture and roadmap that closes the program's highest-risk verification gaps; standardizing reusable electrical, software, data, safety, calibration, and documentation patterns; increasing equipment reliability and utilization while reducing recurring failures and one-off designs; raising the quality of aircraft requirements and interfaces by making testability and verification strategy explicit early in design; and developing senior technical talent through durable practices.
REQUIREMENTS:
- B.S. in Electrical Engineering or related STEM discipline, or equivalent practical experience
- 8+ years of relevant industry experience developing complex electrical hardware, automated test equipment, or multidisciplinary verification systems
- Record of leading multiple hardware development cycles and delivering equipment or products from ambiguous requirements through release, deployment, and sustained use
- Deep expertise in several relevant domains such as power electronics, analog and digital design, RF and communications, instrumentation, data acquisition, control systems, signal integrity, grounding, or system safety
- Demonstrated ability to architect systems spanning custom electronics, commercial instruments, harnessing, embedded control, automation software, mechanical equipment, and facility interfaces
- Strong command of requirements decomposition, interface control, verification planning, design reviews, configuration management, acceptance testing, and technical documentation
- Experience establishing technical standards or reusable platforms and influencing teams beyond direct project authority
- Demonstrated success resolving complex cross-domain failures using data, first-principles reasoning, structured root-cause analysis, and disciplined corrective action
- Ability to communicate technical decisions, risks, and tradeoffs clearly to engineers, operators, program leaders, and executives
- Record of mentoring engineers, raising technical quality, and delivering exceptional outcomes in fast-moving environments
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:
- Experience architecting aerospace or defense ground-test, qualification-test, hardware-in-the-loop, or production-test systems for flight-critical hardware
- Experience across several aircraft electrical domains including high-voltage or high-power systems, batteries, motors and drives, RF, avionics networks, sensors, flight controls, or mission systems
- Experience scaling test capability from early prototype equipment to configuration-controlled platforms used across multiple teams, sites, or product phases
- Experience applying safety and reliability methods such as hazard analysis, FMEA, fault-tree analysis, proof testing, fault insertion, redundancy, and safe-state verification
- Knowledge of environmental and qualification testing such as thermal, vibration, shock, HALT, HASS, ESS, EMI or EMC, and required controls and instrumentation
- Working knowledge of standards such as DO-160, MIL-STD-810, MIL-STD-461, IPC, IEEE, NFPA 70E, or equivalent
- Experience with calibration systems, measurement uncertainty, metrology, data traceability, equipment cybersecurity, or regulated lab and production environments
- Experience developing capital-equipment plans, managing technical suppliers or integrators, and balancing capability, schedule, cost, and lifecycle risk
- Eligibility to obtain a U.S. security clearance if required by the program
