# Director, Mechanical Systems X-BAT **Company**: Shield AI **Location**: Seattle, Washington **Work arrangement**: onsite **Experience**: executive **Job type**: full-time **Salary**: $265,000 - $370,000 a year **Category**: Engineering **Industry**: Technology **Apply**: https://jobs.lever.co/shieldai/4c23f381-f70a-4042-801f-d6c46351236d?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply **Canonical**: https://yubhub.co/jobs/job_5046a861-125 ## Description Shield AI's mission is to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Shield AI is seeking a Director of X-BAT Mechanical Systems to lead engineering managers and senior technical leaders responsible for mechanical systems and mechanical test on X-BAT, while overseeing Mechanical Engineering and Air Vehicle Systems across our Group 5 aircraft programs. ### Responsibilities: - Lead and develop the mechanical systems and mechanical test organization for X-BAT, while providing leadership across Mechanical Engineering and Air Vehicle Systems for our Group 5 aircraft portfolio. - Define organizational structure, establish clear ownership and decision authority, and align talent and resources with aircraft and program priorities. - Recruit, coach, and develop engineering managers and senior technical leaders, building leadership capacity, technical depth, and succession capability. - Establish technical strategy, capability roadmaps, and development priorities for landing gear, wing fold, doors, flight control actuation, hydraulics, environmental control, and thermal management. - Lead aircraft-level architecture and trade studies that balance performance, reliability, safety, mass, power, volume, maintainability, cost, and schedule. - Partner with adjacent engineering organizations to resolve interfaces, reconcile competing requirements, manage dependencies, and retire critical technical risks. - Oversee execution from requirements definition and design through hardware development, systems integration, qualification, ground test, and flight readiness. - Establish practical expectations for design reviews, verification, risk management, and configuration control that produce clear evidence of design maturity and readiness. - Build mechanical test capability encompassing test strategy, facilities, fixtures, instrumentation, procedures, and data analysis to accelerate learning and verify system performance. - Guide hardware development and supplier strategy, establish technical expectations, and hold suppliers and manufacturing partners accountable for quality and execution. - Work closely with manufacturing, ground test, and flight test leadership to align resources, resolve hardware issues, and deliver integrated systems for aircraft evaluation. - Communicate technical direction, progress, risks, decisions, and resource needs to executive leadership, program stakeholders, and customers. ### Requirements: - Bachelor’s degree or higher in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related technical discipline. - 15+ years of relevant experience in aerospace mechanical systems, air vehicle systems, or comparable complex hardware development. - Substantial experience managing engineering managers and senior technical leaders within a multidisciplinary engineering organization. - Broad technical credibility across aircraft mechanical systems, with significant expertise in landing gear, actuation, mechanisms, environmental control, or thermal management. - Demonstrated success building engineering organizations, hiring and developing leaders, allocating resources, and maintaining high technical standards. - Experience guiding teams through hardware development, systems integration, verification, supplier execution, manufacturing, and flight test. - Proven ability to make aircraft-level tradeoffs, manage dependencies across programs, and focus teams on work that advances program objectives. - Sound engineering and business judgment, including the ability to make decisions with incomplete information while balancing technical risk, cost, schedule, and program maturity. - Clear, decisive communication skills and demonstrated success creating alignment across engineering, program leadership, and external stakeholders. - U.S. citizenship. ### Preferred Qualifications: - Leadership experience spanning multiple mechanical engineering departments or a broad air vehicle systems portfolio. - Development experience on UAVs, autonomous aircraft, fighters, tactical aircraft, or other high-performance aerospace programs. - Experience scaling engineering organizations, mechanical test facilities, and development processes in a rapid research and development or production environment. - Familiarity with aircraft airworthiness, qualification, and verification practices, including MIL-HDBK-516 and MIL-STD-810. - Demonstrated success taking aircraft hardware through prototype build, integration, ground test, flight test, and transition to production. - Advanced degree in a relevant engineering discipline. - Active Secret or higher security clearance. ### Compensation: - $265,000 - $370,000 a year ## Skills ### Required - Mechanical Engineering - Aerospace Engineering - aircraft mechanical systems - leadership - engineering management ### Nice to have - UAVs - autonomous aircraft - MIL-HDBK-516 - MIL-STD-810 --- Source: [Apply at jobs.lever.co](https://jobs.lever.co/shieldai/4c23f381-f70a-4042-801f-d6c46351236d?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply)