# Senior Engineer, Mission Systems

**Company**: Shield AI
**Location**: Washington, DC / Boston, MA / San Diego, California / Dallas, Texas
**Work arrangement**: onsite
**Experience**: senior
**Job type**: full-time
**Salary**: $170,000 - $250,000 a year
**Category**: Engineering
**Industry**: Technology

**Apply**: https://jobs.lever.co/shieldai/dab6c7df-d56a-4993-ab0c-c53a72698eb3
**Canonical**: https://yubhub.co/jobs/job_bd2ce8a2-ff9

## Description

This senior staff engineer for mission systems will serve as a senior technical leader responsible for the end-to-end engineering of mission systems on advanced next-gen unmanned aircraft, including payloads, communications, avionics, weapons, and associated support systems.

The engineer will drive mission system architectures, lead requirement development and allocation, and oversee system integration from concept through flight test and fielding. They will ensure that payloads, avionics, and weapons are seamlessly integrated into the aircraft while meeting mission performance, safety, airworthiness, and compliance objectives.

Key responsibilities include leading system architecture and requirements development and integration for payloads, avionics, and weapons integration, serving as a technical subject matter expert for mission systems engineering across the aircraft program, driving trade studies and system-of-systems analysis to balance performance, cost, and schedule, overseeing integration and test campaigns, from bench-level hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) to flight test, and ensuring compliance with MIL-HDBK-516C, DO-178C, DO-254, and related standards.

The ideal candidate will have a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related field, 8+ years of relevant aerospace/defense experience, with at least 5 years in mission systems integration, demonstrated experience with aircraft payloads, avionics, and/or weapons integration, and working knowledge of Government modular open system approach (MOSA) standards to include open mission systems (OMS), Government Reference Architectures (GRA) or modular avionics standards.

## Skills

### Required
- B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related field
- 8+ years of relevant aerospace/defense experience
- Aircraft payloads, avionics, and/or weapons integration
- Government modular open system approach (MOSA) standards
- MIL-HDBK-516C, DO-178C, DO-254, and related standards

### Nice to have
- Master’s or PhD in Aerospace, Systems, or Electrical Engineering
- Hands-on experience with flight test operations and mission system validation
- Direct experience integrating advanced sensors, autonomy, AI-enabled payloads, or guided weapons
- Background in model-based systems engineering (MBSE) and SysML tools
- Strong knowledge of current aircraft mission systems vendors and capabilities