Senior Engineer, Flight Test (R5371)

Shield AI is seeking a Senior Engineer, Flight Test to join the Hivemind Quality team. The successful candidate will develop and execute comprehensive flight test strategies that validate autonomous behaviors, software integrations, and end-to-end system performance.

Responsibilities:

• Develop and execute flight test plans that validate new autonomy capabilities, software integrations, and system performance in real-world flight environments.
• Design and execute test scenarios that reproduce operational customer workflows and mission conditions to identify software defects, integration issues, and performance limitations.
• Build analysis tools and validation workflows that improve test coverage, accelerate regression testing, and reduce time to identify issues.
• Review flight logs, telemetry, rosbags, and system data to triage issues, perform root-cause analysis, and collaborate with engineering teams to drive resolution.
• Work closely with middleware, autonomy, and integration teams to develop complementary test strategies, share tooling, and improve overall product quality.
• Provide technical guidance to junior engineers, establish testing standards, and help improve engineering processes across the organization.
• Maintain standard operating procedures, participate in flight operations, and contribute to the continuous improvement of testing processes and operational readiness.

Requirements:

• Minimum of 5 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; or 4 years and a Master's degree; or equivalent work experience.
• Proficiency in software quality engineering, test automation, and programming with Python and C++.
• Experience planning and executing field or flight testing for robotics, autonomous systems, or complex software platforms.
• Experience developing automated test tooling, validation frameworks, or data analysis tools.
• Demonstrated experience designing, documenting, executing, and tracking test plans, test cases, and software defects.
• Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to analyze flight logs, telemetry, and system behavior to identify root causes.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to collaborate across software, hardware, product, and test organizations.
• FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate (or the ability to obtain one within a reasonable timeframe).

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience using GenAI tools to improve engineering productivity or software quality.
• Experience with C++14/C++17, TypeScript, JSON, and modern software development practices.
• Experience with ROS.
• Proficiency with simulation tools and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) testing environments.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines.
• Familiarity with networking, Linux operating systems, and radio communications.
• Experience testing autonomous aerial systems or other robotic platforms.
• Experience analyzing flight telemetry, sensor data, and autonomy behaviors.