Staff Engineer, Industrial (R6313)

Shield AI•Seattle, WA

21h•$170,000 - $260,000

About The Position

The Staff Industrial Engineer, Sustainment Analytics, leads data-driven sustainment decisions for fielded aircraft systems. The role integrates maintenance, FRACAS, failure and repair, supply-chain, operational demand, configuration, labor, and fleet-trend data to identify sources of downtime, maintenance burden, readiness risk, and lifecycle cost. The engineer converts these findings into structured analyses, trade studies, and actionable recommendations to optimize maintenance levels, repair capability, spares, manpower, support equipment, processes, and sustainment strategy, improving fleet readiness, repair throughput, maintenance effectiveness, and total cost of ownership. The position works closely with Fleet Support Engineering, Reliability and Maintainability Engineering, Product Engineering, Reliability Data Engineering, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Finance, and Operations to support fleet availability, customer support, affordability, and long-term system performance. It also establishes repeatable sustainment analytics processes and helps mature the capability toward predictive and condition-based maintenance and proactive fleet-health decision support.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering, Systems Engineering, Operations Research, Data Analytics, or a related technical discipline; equivalent practical experience is considered.
At least 5 years of experience in industrial engineering, sustainment, logistics, supportability, maintenance, operations research, fleet operations, aviation sustainment, defense logistics, or complex hardware-support environments.
Demonstrated experience using maintenance, reliability, repair, inventory, supply-chain, production, fleet-operations, or fielded-hardware data to develop quantitative analyses and recommendations related to availability, readiness, repair capability, logistics, labor, capacity, cost, and operational performance.
Experience performing repair-versus-replace, make-versus-buy, repair-capability, or comparable sustainment trade studies, including building structured models, quantifying assumptions, conducting sensitivity analyses, comparing alternatives, and communicating uncertainty and risk.
Proficiency with SQL, Python, Power BI, Tableau, Excel, R, MATLAB, or comparable tools for data analysis, modeling, visualization, and reporting.
Ability to integrate technical, operational, supply-chain, labor, and financial inputs into practical, data-driven recommendations for complex sustainment decisions while balancing analytical rigor, data limitations, operational urgency, customer impact, fleet readiness, cost, and long-term sustainment needs.
Strong cross-functional collaboration and communication skills, including the ability to work with engineering, fleet support, supply chain, manufacturing, finance, operations, and analytics teams; develop clear decision packages, technical analyses, recommendations, and leadership-level summaries; and independently drive decisions without direct authority.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with aviation, defense, aerospace manufacturing, unmanned systems, aircraft sustainment, and deployed hardware systems.
Familiarity with RCCA, FRACAS, PQDR, AS9100, service bulletins, maintenance releases, supply chain, and workforce management.
Proficiency with data analysis and visualization tools such as SQL, Excel, Python, Salesforce, Foundry, or similar platforms.
Demonstrated ability to collect, clean, join, and structure data from multiple operational, maintenance, failure, or quality systems.
Experience developing metrics, dashboards, or recurring reports that improved decision-making, increased visibility, or reduced manual reporting effort.
Demonstrated success identifying and correcting data-quality, traceability, or reporting issues before they affect technical or business decisions.
Ability to translate complex data into clear, decision-ready information for technical and non-technical audiences.
Experience supporting military, government, international, or deployed aviation customers.
Familiarity with ITAR, export-controlled technical data, or controlled customer environments.
Active Secret or Top Secret clearance.

Responsibilities

Own sustainment decision analysis for fielded aircraft systems, including maintenance-level determinations; repair-versus-replace, repair-location, and repair-capability assessments; spares optimization; manpower analysis; and support-equipment trade studies.
Build and maintain integrated fleet-readiness and availability models linking reliability, maintainability, maintenance demand, repair turnaround time, inventory and supply lead times, labor availability, operational utilization, repair capacity, and cost to readiness outcomes.
Develop repair-versus-replace and repair-network business cases assessing discard, organizational or field-level repair, depot or centralized repair, supplier return, and redesign alternatives.
Analyze maintenance records, work orders, failure and repair history, supply and logistics data, labor data, and fleet operations data to identify recurring maintenance burdens, demand drivers, capacity constraints, bottlenecks, readiness risks, and sustainment opportunities.
Develop demand forecasts, spares recommendations, and provisioning strategies using failure rates, consumption history, repair turnaround times, operational tempo, lead times, service-level targets, and deployment requirements.
Perform manpower, workload, capacity, and skill-mix analyses to define staffing needs, identify workload constraints and maintenance bottlenecks, and improve repair throughput and maintenance effectiveness.
Evaluate investments in support equipment, test equipment, tooling, facilities, and repair capability by quantifying capacity, utilization, cost, risk reduction, readiness impact, return on investment, and lifecycle value.
Develop lifecycle-cost models and economic trade studies for sustainment planning, maintenance-program changes, provisioning decisions, repair-network strategy, and leadership investment decisions.
Apply Pareto, trend, statistical, sensitivity, and scenario analyses to prioritize actions that improve fleet availability, reduce downtime and sustainment cost, and mitigate readiness risk.
Translate analyses into recommendations, decision packages, executive-ready briefings, and prioritized action plans for sustainment leadership and cross-functional stakeholders.
Establish repeatable sustainment analytics processes, including data standards, modeling methods, decision criteria, assumptions management, and lessons-learned feedback loops.