Chief Engineer - Launch & Recovery Vehicle (R4033)

Shield AI • Washington, DC

82d • $224,000 - $336,000

About The Position

The Chief Engineer for the Launch & Recovery Vehicle (LRV) leads the technical development, integration, and validation of a mobile launch and recovery system supporting a Group 5 unmanned aerial vehicle. This role acts as the technical authority and product owner, ensuring the LRV meets mission performance, reliability, and safety objectives through disciplined engineering, rigorous testing, and cross-functional integration. You will define what the vehicle must do, how it will do it, and prove that it can — while managing risk and guiding the team through design, analysis, test, and field operations.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Physics, or related field (Mechanical/Aerospace ideal).
• 10+ years leading multidisciplinary engineering teams delivering complex electro-mechanical or automation systems.
• Proven record of owning system performance from requirements through test and field validation.
• Strong systems engineering discipline — requirements traceability, margins, and verification planning.
• Skilled in risk-based decision-making and tradeoffs across performance, cost, and schedule.
• Broad technical fluency across mechanical, electrical, software, and controls domains.
• Experience managing product lifecycle: design, build, integration, and test.
• Comfortable leading technical reviews (PDR, CDR, TRR, FRR) and closing actions to standard.
• Effective at cross-functional coordination with manufacturing, test, and operations.
• Clear communicator — able to translate technical reality to executive and customer audiences.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical direction and ensure the product architecture fulfills mission needs and system constraints.
• Translate user and stakeholder requirements into verifiable system capabilities with defined margins and measures.
• Lead cross-discipline integration, ensuring mechanical, electrical, software, and test teams deliver a coherent design.
• Drive risk reduction and test strategy—plan, prioritize, and execute early demos and stress-to-failure tests.
• Maintain the functional baseline and verify that each subsystem meets its allocated performance and interface requirements.
• Guide trade studies balancing performance, cost, schedule, manufacturability, and reliability.
• Ensure analytical models are correlated to test data, closing the loop between simulation and experiment.
• Control the technical baseline and configuration, approving major design and requirement changes.
• Chair or support technical reviews (PDR, CDR, TRR) and enforce closure of open actions.
• Own the risk register, quantify technical and programmatic risk, and ensure mitigation plans are executable and tracked.
• Serve as the single point of technical accountability to leadership and customers.
• Define and maintain verification and validation (V&V) plans that trace requirements to tests and results.
• Communicate technical status using transparent, quantitative metrics on performance, maturity, and uncertainty.
• Integrate product development with manufacturing and sustainment to ensure designs are buildable and supportable.
• Foster a disciplined, data-driven engineering culture that values early learning, iteration, and truth-seeking.

Benefits

• Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity
• Temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Bachelor's degree
• Number of Employees: 501-1,000 employees