Director, Engineering Excellence & Design Standards

Shield AI • San Diego, CA

1d

About The Position

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. Shield AI is building the world's best AI pilot to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems. As the company scales both its proven VBAT platform and develops next-generation systems like XBAT, it is investing in how it builds. This position seeks a senior technical leader to define and operationalize engineering design standards across the company. The role is focused on establishing engineering excellence, driving consistency, rigor, and scalability across design, analysis, certification, CAD, documentation, and configuration management. This is a high-impact individual contributor role with broad scope across multiple engineering disciplines, responsible for raising the bar on engineering quality without slowing down execution.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in aerospace or high-performance hardware design environments
• Deep experience working within organizations that maintain strong engineering standards and design rigor
• Broad technical background across multiple engineering domains (mechanical, aerospace, systems, etc.)
• Experience defining or applying design standards, documentation practices, and configuration management systems
• Familiarity with industry standards such as MIL-STD-810, DO-160, and ASME Y14.5 (GD&T)
• Demonstrated ability to influence senior engineers and drive alignment across teams
• Strong track record of improving engineering quality, consistency, and scalability
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to clearly articulate standards and expectations across technical audiences

Responsibilities

• Establish and own engineering design standards across programs, including XBAT and VBAT
• Define and standardize best practices for aerospace design, analysis workflows, and system-level engineering rigor
• Develop standards for CAD usage, drawing quality, standard notes, release processes, and engineering documentation
• Manufacturing & supply chain handoff including EBOM and MBOM creation along with driving part demand
• Build and mature an engineering excellence framework that scales with the company
• Partner with engineering leadership to align teams on consistent ways of working
• Ensure standards are practical, accessible, and consistently applied across teams
• Influence design decisions and engineering processes across disciplines without becoming a bottleneck
• Support both near-term program execution and long-term scalability of engineering processes
• Drive improvements in configuration management, documentation quality, and design consistency

Benefits

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

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 501-1,000 employees