# Senior Staff Engineer, Flight Control Actuation Systems (RX) (R5999)

**Company**: Shield AI
**Location**: Dallas, Texas
**Work arrangement**: onsite
**Experience**: senior
**Job type**: Full Time Employee
**Salary**: USD 173,760-260,640 per-year-salary
**Category**: Engineering
**Industry**: Technology

**Apply**: https://jobs.lever.co/shieldai/84ea353d-bd9b-4d1a-8e9c-3b4f31135a2f?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply
**Canonical**: https://yubhub.co/jobs/job_71ecf8ae-b55

## Description

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems.

As a Staff or Senior Staff Engineer (L4/L5), you will take full technical ownership of flight control actuation system design for a Group 5 UAV fighter aircraft. You will work from first principles to define requirements, resolve actuator and integration trades, and drive qualified flight-control actuation hardware from design through production support.

## Responsibilities

- System Ownership: Define, allocate, and own the FCAS requirements and verification traceability matrix.

- Actuator Performance: Design and analyze control surface actuation systems, including sizing, dynamic response, bandwidth, redundancy, and failure modes.

- Control-Law Integration: Drive the control law-actuator interface with Flight Controls and Vehicle Management Systems, including actuator dynamics modeling and control surface authority requirements.

- Power and Thermal Integration: Drive actuator power source architecture and load analysis with EPS and hydraulic systems leads, and resolve actuator heat-generation and local thermal-load interfaces with thermal management.

- Structural Integration: Drive coordination of control surface hinge moments and actuator reaction loads with structures.

- Qualification and Hardware Delivery: Define and execute FCAS qualification test plans per MIL-HDBK-516 and MIL-STD-810, using test results to mature qualified flight-control actuation hardware.

- Program Execution: Lead FCAS design-maturity and qualification-status reviews at SRR, PDR, and CDR.

## Required qualifications

- Clearance required: US Citizens Only & Must have an Active Secret or higher clearance.

- Experience: 8 to 15 years in flight control actuation system design on fixed-wing aircraft.

- Education: B.S. or M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related technical discipline.

- Hardware and Supplier Execution: Proven track record sourcing COTS/custom aerospace components, driving suppliers to schedule, and assembling benchtop or vehicle-level test setups.

- Autonomy: Demonstrated ability to self-direct, prioritize technical tasks without oversight, and deliver functional hardware under tight timelines.

- Dynamic Performance: Demonstrated experience with actuator dynamic performance analysis, including bandwidth, response, stability margins, failure mode analysis, and redundancy analysis.

- Integration: Experience coordinating with flight controls and VMS engineers on actuator-control law integration.

- Standards and Reviews: Familiarity with MIL-HDBK-516 and MIL-STD-810 as applied to flight control actuation, and experience supporting SRR, PDR, and CDR on a DoD or fighter-class aircraft program.

## Preferred qualifications

- Prior fighter or fighter-adjacent program experience, manned or unmanned.

- Unmanned or autonomous flight control experience, including the redundancy philosophy differences from manned aircraft.

- Experience with EMA or EHA control surface actuators.

## Skills

### Required
- flight control actuation system design
- mechanical engineering
- aerospace engineering
- MIL-HDBK-516
- MIL-STD-810

### Nice to have
- EMA or EHA control surface actuators
- unmanned or autonomous flight control experience
- fighter or fighter-adjacent program experience

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Source: [Apply at jobs.lever.co](https://jobs.lever.co/shieldai/84ea353d-bd9b-4d1a-8e9c-3b4f31135a2f?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply)