Skip to main content
S

Principal Engineer, Systems (R5048)

shieldai

Location

San Diego, California

Salary

$200,000 - $300,000 /yearly

Type

fulltime

Posted

4 days ago

via lever

Job Description

Founded in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed deep-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include the V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, Hivemind Enterprise, and the Hivemind Vision product lines. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and the 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.

What You’ll Do:

  • Systems Engineering Discipline Leadership: Drive the adoption and enforcement of systems engineering best practices across the organization, serving as a technical authority and trusted partner to engineering leadership.
  • Requirements Management & Traceability: Lead the development of structured, testable, and fully traceable system requirements, ensuring end-to-end linkage across architecture, verification, and implementation.
  • Architecture Definition: Define and maintain system architectures using MBSE methodologies and tools (e.g., Cameo), promoting model-centric engineering for system understanding and decision-making.
  • Verification & Validation Planning: Establish comprehensive, executable verification strategies aligned with system requirements and operational use cases, supporting integration and test efforts.
  • System Assurance Integration: Integrate system safety and security assurance considerations into requirements, architecture, and verification to support mission assurance and compliance objectives.
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with software architects, product teams, test engineers, and engineering leadership to align system-level decisions/execution across the organization and bridge between SEIT and the broader engineering organization.
  • Key Outcomes:

  • End-to-End Requirements Traceability Established: System requirements are consistently structured, testable, and fully traceable across architecture, implementation, and verification artifacts.
  • MBSE Adoption at Scale: Model-based systems engineering is broadly adopted, with system architecture and interfaces defined and maintained in a shared, authoritative model.
  • System Assurance Integrated Early: System safety and assurance considerations are embedded in requirements and architecture upfront, reducing late-stage risk and rework.
  • Cross-Functional System Alignment Achieved: Software, product, and Integration & Test teams operate with a clear, shared understanding of system architecture, interfaces, and constraints.
  • Systems Engineering Rigor and Process Maturity Improved: Standardized processes, tools, and artifacts are in place and consistently used across teams, improving quality, predictability, and scalability.
  • Required Qualifications:

  • 15+ years in Systems Engineering, Architecture, or technical leadership roles
  • Experience in defense or aerospace, ideally with software-intensive unmanned aircraft systems (UAS)
  • Strong background in traceable requirements development, system architecture and interface definition, and V&V planning
  • Hands-on experience with MBSE tools (Cameo Systems Modeler or equivalent) and SysML
  • Proven ability to lead engineering discipline across teams and influence technical direction
  • Bachelor’s degree in engineering or related field
  • Preferred Qualifications:

  • Experience integrating system safety and assurance practices into engineering workflows
  • Familiarity with certification standards such as MIL-HDBK-516C and CMMC/NIST SP 800-53
  • Advanced degree in engineering or related field
  • Looking for more opportunities?

    Browse thousands of graduate jobs and entry-level positions.

    Browse All Jobs