# Senior Staff Engineer, Flight Control Actuation Systems - Ranger (R6327)

**Company**: Shield AI
**Location**: Seattle, Washington
**Work arrangement**: onsite
**Experience**: senior
**Job type**: Full Time Employee
**Salary**: USD 200,000-310,000 per-year-salary
**Category**: Engineering
**Industry**: Technology

**Apply**: https://jobs.lever.co/shieldai/ac52c9b2-f18d-49e5-bb0b-9e82e7b03ac9?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply
**Canonical**: https://yubhub.co/jobs/job_73e5cfef-a2d

## Description

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

As a Senior Staff Engineer, 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.

## Requirements

- 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.

- Secret clearance eligible.

## Skills

### Required
- flight control actuation system design
- Mechanical Engineering
- Aerospace Engineering
- actuator dynamic performance analysis
- MIL-HDBK-516
- MIL-STD-810

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

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Source: [Apply at jobs.lever.co](https://jobs.lever.co/shieldai/ac52c9b2-f18d-49e5-bb0b-9e82e7b03ac9?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply)