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 hiring a Hivemind Field Solutions Engineer to support technical sales, customer engagements, demonstrations, and capture activities for Hivemind across the Americas region.
This role will serve as a customer-facing technical expert for Hivemind, helping translate customer mission needs into credible, technically feasible solutions. The FSE will partner closely with Business Development, Product, Engineering, Customer Engagement, and Program teams to support demos, technical interchange meetings, RFIs, RFPs, white papers, and customer-specific solution development.
This position requires a strong technical foundation in autonomy, mission software, simulation, and AI-enabled systems. The ideal candidate will bring direct experience with Department of War simulation environments, live-virtual-constructive training and test ecosystems, synthetic environments, image-generation systems, and/or synthetic data workflows. This person should be comfortable explaining complex technical systems to customers, shaping demos around mission objectives, and feeding customer insights back into product and engineering teams.
The Field Solutions Engineering team acts as a BD force multiplier, bridging Shield AI’s technical roadmap to customer needs and ensuring customer-facing solutions are accurate, feasible, and mission-relevant.
This role will be based in either San Diego or San Francisco, CA.
Required qualifications:
- 7+ years of experience in solutions engineering, field applications engineering, systems engineering, technical sales, autonomy, robotics, simulation, defense software, or related technical customer-facing roles.
- Strong technical understanding of autonomy, AI-enabled systems, mission software, simulation environments, or complex defense technology systems.
- Experience supporting customer-facing technical engagements such as demos, technical briefings, proposal support, integration discussions, or technical interchange meetings.
- Demonstrated experience with one or more of the following areas: Department of War simulation systems, live-virtual-constructive environments, synthetic training environments, synthetic data generation, image-generation systems, simulation-based test and evaluation, or mission rehearsal workflows.
- Ability to translate customer mission needs into technically feasible solution concepts, requirements, demos, and product feedback.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to technical, operational, BD, and leadership audiences.
- Ability to work cross-functionally with Business Development, Product Management, Engineering, Customer Engagement, and Program teams.
- Strong judgment in representing product capabilities, limitations, and roadmap dependencies to customers.
- Ability to manage ambiguity, prioritize competing demands, and execute in a fast-paced environment.
- Willingness and ability to travel for customer engagements, demonstrations, exercises, and internal meetings.
Preferred qualifications:
- Direct experience supporting Department of War simulation, modeling and simulation, test and evaluation, training, experimentation, or mission rehearsal programs.
- Experience with LVC architectures, simulation interoperability, synthetic environments, constructive entities, digital twins, or operational test environments.
- Experience with image-generation systems, synthetic imagery, AI-generated training data, computer vision datasets, sensor simulation, or perception model evaluation.
- Hands-on experience with Python, Linux, APIs, SDKs, simulation tooling, autonomy software, robotics middleware, or technical prototyping.
- Familiarity with autonomy development workflows, including simulation-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, software-in-the-loop, mission rehearsal, test automation, or scenario generation.
- Experience working with U.S. DoD customers, defense primes, government labs, test ranges, training organizations, or operational units.
- Experience supporting proposals, RFIs, RFPs, white papers, technical volumes, or capture activities.
- Prior military, defense, aerospace, robotics, or advanced simulation experience.
- Active U.S. security clearance.
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Full-time regular employee offer package:
Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity
Temporary employee offer package:
Pay within range listed above + temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)
Salary compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, licenses and certifications, and specific work location. All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check. Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits. Please speak to your talent acquisition representative for more information.
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Shield AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.