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

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.