Senior Engineer, Flight Test (R5371)

Shield AI•San Diego, CA

23h•$110,000 - $170,000

About The Position

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company founded in 2015, with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. The Hivemind Quality team is committed to ensuring our autonomy platform delivers reliable, mission-ready capabilities through rigorous integration, validation, and flight testing. We work closely with autonomy, platform, and hardware teams to validate new features in simulation, hardware-in-the-loop, and real-world flight environments, ensuring our customers can confidently deploy autonomous systems in demanding operational conditions. We are seeking an experienced Senior Engineer, Flight Test passionate about autonomy development and system validation. In this role, you will develop and execute comprehensive flight test strategies that validate autonomous behaviors, software integrations, and end-to-end system performance. You will work closely with software, hardware, and product teams to reproduce real-world mission scenarios, identify product issues, and improve the quality and reliability of the Hivemind platform. You will also develop tooling that accelerates testing and analysis while mentoring engineers and helping establish best practices across the organization. This position bridges software quality, systems integration, and flight operations—ensuring our autonomy platform delivers reliable, mission-ready autonomous capabilities.

Requirements

Typically requires a minimum of 5 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; or 4 years and a Master's degree; or equivalent work experience.
Proficiency in software quality engineering, test automation, and programming with Python and C++.
Experience planning and executing field or flight testing for robotics, autonomous systems, or complex software platforms.
Experience developing automated test tooling, validation frameworks, or data analysis tools.
Demonstrated experience designing, documenting, executing, and tracking test plans, test cases, and software defects.
Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to analyze flight logs, telemetry, and system behavior to identify root causes.
Excellent communication skills with the ability to collaborate across software, hardware, product, and test organizations.
FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate (or the ability to obtain one within a reasonable timeframe).

Nice To Haves

Experience using GenAI tools to improve engineering productivity or software quality.
Experience with C++14/C++17, TypeScript, JSON, and modern software development practices.
Experience with ROS.
Proficiency with simulation tools and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) testing environments.
Experience with CI/CD pipelines.
Familiarity with networking, Linux operating systems, and radio communications.
Experience testing autonomous aerial systems or other robotic platforms.
Experience analyzing flight telemetry, sensor data, and autonomy behaviors.

Responsibilities

Develop and execute flight test plans that validate new autonomy capabilities, software integrations, and system performance in real-world flight environments.
Design and execute test scenarios that reproduce operational customer workflows and mission conditions to identify software defects, integration issues, and performance limitations.
Build analysis tools and validation workflows that improve test coverage, accelerate regression testing, and reduce time to identify issues.
Review flight logs, telemetry, rosbags, and system data to triage issues, perform root-cause analysis, and collaborate with engineering teams to drive resolution.
Work closely with middleware, autonomy, and integration teams to develop complementary test strategies, share tooling, and improve overall product quality.
Provide technical guidance to junior engineers, establish testing standards, and help improve engineering processes across the organization.
Maintain standard operating procedures, participate in flight operations, and contribute to the continuous improvement of testing processes and operational readiness.