Description
Lead the software architecture for Shield AI's XBAT program across Mission, Vehicle, and Autonomy software domains. Build a safe, secure, and scalable architecture that enables high-assurance, cyber-relevant software development for an advanced airborne system and its ground stations, reporting to the XBAT Software Lead.
Key responsibilities include:
- Defining and evolving the system-wide software architecture for XBAT, spanning airborne vehicle, ground station, and autonomy layers.
- Translating safety and security goals into technical requirements, standards, and design patterns that guide engineers across multiple software teams.
- Ensuring architecture supports safety-critical and cyber-relevant workflows, including formalizing architecture decisions, traceability, and compliance pathways appropriate for advanced airborne systems.
- Driving cross-team alignment on APIs, data flows, fault handling, verification strategy, and risk management so mission, vehicle, and autonomy components integrate cleanly.
- Partnering with engineering leadership, system architects, and validation teams to balance innovation speed with rigorous assurance practices.
- Setting technical direction for long-term scalability: modularity, maintainability, testability, and support for future capability growth or certification needs.
- Mentoring senior engineers and architects, raising the bar for design rigor, documentation quality, and architectural judgment across the organization.
- Producing and maintaining architecture artifacts: high-level system diagrams, component interfaces, data models, risk analyses, and design rationales.
- Leading technical reviews for major features, changes, or integration points; ensuring alignment with architectural standards and safety/security constraints.
- Defining architecture governance: decision records, change control processes, quality gates, and collaboration flows among development, verification, and operations.
- Collaborating with systems, hardware, and avionics teams to manage boundaries, timing, resource allocation, and failure modes that affect overall aircraft and mission performance.
- Driving technology evaluation and roadmap: selecting or validating frameworks, middleware, and tooling that meet performance, assurance, and cyber-hardening needs.
- Supporting external or internal readiness evaluations: providing architectural evidence, participating in reviews, and helping the program articulate compliance posture as requirements evolve.
- Advocating for continuous improvement in architecture practice: metrics, architecture reviews, knowledge sharing, and onboarding for new team members.