Staff, Field Solutions Engineer - Asia / Middle East

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

The Staff, Field Solutions Engineer - Asia / Middle East role provides technical expertise and support to customers in the Asia, Middle East, and Oceana regions prior to the sale of Shield AI Aircraft and other products.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical capture efforts for Asia, Middle East, and Oceana opportunities, ensuring solutions are technically sound, feasible, and aligned with Shield AI’s product roadmap.
• Manage multiple priorities in a dynamic, fast-paced environment, including customer engagements, pre-sales technical support, proposal contributions, and solution development.
• Develop and execute technical strategies that result in high-quality, compliant, and compelling proposals to maximize win probability.
• Serve as the primary technical lead for GTM engagements in Asia, interfacing cross-functionally with BD, GTM Operations, Engineering, Operations, Program Management, and Product Management to ensure customer needs are met.
• Manage technical content for proposals, requests for information (RFIs), white papers, and capability briefs, ensuring accuracy, clarity, and compliance.
• Support GTM and Account Executives by becoming a Subject Matter Expert in Shield AI products, providing technical expertise in customer engagements, capability briefings, and solution discussions to drive successful sales outcomes.
• Act as a liaison between GTM and Engineering, ensuring that new customer requests are technically feasible and align with product capabilities, timelines, and roadmaps.
• Contribute to the technical documentation repository, maintaining capability briefs, specifications, FAQs, and other sales collateral for internal and external use.
• Provide training and mentorship to GTM teams on technical aspects of Shield AI’s solutions, enabling them to articulate our value proposition confidently.
• Support competitive analysis and market intelligence, ensuring the GTM team remains informed on industry trends and competitor capabilities.
• Contribute to process improvement efforts, leveraging lessons learned from customer engagements to refine GTM workflows and technical capture strategies.
• Analyze the unique operational and environmental factors of the assigned region, producing high-impact white papers and briefs that inform the product roadmap and drive solutions aligned to customer mission needs.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in technical presales, business development, or solutions engineering, preferably in defense, aerospace, AI-driven technology, or U.S. Federal/International government environments.
• Bachelor's degree in engineering, applied science, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong technical acumen in uncrewed aircraft systems mission payloads, and autonomy enabled concepts of operation, with the ability to reason across air vehicle, sensor, datalink, and ground system elements.
• Outstanding analytical and quantitative problem-solving skills, with a demonstrated aptitude for technical assessments and solution development.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear, compelling messaging for both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to work collaboratively in a cross-functional team environment and effectively engage with stakeholders at all levels of an organization.
• Demonstrated success interfacing between technical program teams and customer facing business development organizations.
• Track record of high performance, including a demonstrated work ethic, reliability as a teammate, kindness, and commitment to high standards.
• Demonstrated ability to lead in fast paced, ambiguous environments requiring cross functional coordination and executive judgment.
• Proven ability to shape early capture pursuits, including RFIs, AOAs, draft RFPs, and white papers, and the ability to align solution concepts with long term program strategy.
• Experience working with international defense customers, including exposure to procurement processes, operational evaluations, and information security or export considerations.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex customer engagements end to end, including requirements discovery, solution shaping, and technical proposal ownership.
• Willingness and ability to travel up to 25%, domestically and internationally to support customers, partners, tests, and demonstrations.

Preferred Qualifications

• Graduate degree in engineering, applied science, systems management, business, or equivalent practical experience.
• Prior hands on experience with V-BAT operations, employment, testing, or integration, or direct experience with comparable vertical takeoff tactical UAS platforms.
• Familiarity with Shield AI's autonomy stack, mission software, and payload ecosystem, including Hivemind, AI Pilot, ISR payloads, and associated ground systems, or similar autonomy enabled mission systems.
• Deep familiarity with international defense market dynamics, including key ministries, acquisition paths such as FMS and DCS, and Asia nation processes, and regional operational trends relevant to V-BAT missions.
• Experience owning recurring product line or program governance forums such as forecast reviews, readiness reviews, export reviews, or configuration and obsolescence boards.
• Experience managing or contributing to complex multinational capture efforts, including coalition or partnered operations, offset requirements, and industrial participation structures.
• Background spanning both systems engineering and customer facing work, with demonstrated ability to translate operational problems into implementable technical architectures and configurations.
• Experience influencing pricing, product offering definition, or production planning based on field and customer input.
• Three or more years of experience in a startup or high growth environment where processes, products, and markets evolve quickly.
• Prior military aviation, operational UAS, or defense acquisition experience.
• Fluency or strong proficiency in one or more additional languages relevant to key V-BAT markets.
• Familiarity with the military objectives, limitations, procurement processes, military structures and technology of US Allies and Partners in Asia.
• Active DoD security clearance.