Senior Staff Engineer, Mission Architect (R5876)

Shield AI is seeking a Senior Staff Engineer, Mission Architect to own the mission representation of various programs, applying systems engineering, modeling, simulation, and operational analysis techniques.

Responsibilities

• Employ the Mission Engineering process to develop pertinent analyses and assess how current and emerging autonomous capabilities enable desired mission effects in representative military scenarios.
• Utilize systems engineering tools alongside modeling and simulation tools to develop mission models, architectures, analytical frameworks, requirements, and traceability artifacts.
• Develop Mission Engineering artifacts such as mission threads, concepts of operations (CONOPS), and mission architectures for new AI-driven autonomous capabilities.
• Work closely with engineering teams and product managers to translate mission needs and operational insights into system requirements, design decisions, and capability improvements.
• Define trade studies and sensitivity analyses to identify key mission drivers, capability gaps, system dependencies, and performance thresholds under varying operational conditions and threats.
• Collaborate with DoD stakeholders, operators, and warfighters to characterize missions, define measures of effectiveness and performance, establish the data, modeling, and analysis required to assess them, and align system capabilities with operational needs.
• Develop and present technical reports, mission architectures, trade studies, and recommendations to senior leadership, customers, and government agencies.
• Leverage modern compute and development best practices to build, run, and iterate mission models and analysis pipelines quickly and reliably.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in mission engineering, systems engineering, operational analysis, modeling & simulation (M&S) or a related discipline.
• Prior experience in mission-thread analysis, force-on-force analysis, capability-gap analysis, CONOPS development, or military campaign modeling.
• Proficiency with SysML or other systems engineering tools in conjunction with AFSIM, STK, MATLAB, or Python for aerospace and defense applications.
• Experience working with DoD stakeholders, warfighters, and government agencies to characterize mission needs and translate operational objectives into system capabilities, requirements, and engineering trades.
• Demonstrated ability to apply systems engineering, modern compute, data analysis, and software development best practices to build and maintain reliable models, simulations, and analytical workflows.
• Excellent communication and briefing skills, with experience presenting technical and operational analyses to senior leadership, customers, and military personnel.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, agile development environment with shifting priorities.
• Active Secret or Top-Secret clearance (or ability to obtain one).

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with model-based systems engineering (MBSE), digital engineering, and SysML 2.0.
• Familiarity with DoD Mission Engineering methodologies, systems-of-systems engineering, DoD acquisition processes and JCIDS.
• Experience integrating AI-driven decision-making algorithms or autonomous systems into mission engineering and operational analysis frameworks.
• Prior military service or experience working with U.S. Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Army, or Special Operations Forces.