# Manager, Environmental Control Systems & Thermal Engineering (R6306)

**Company**: Shield AI
**Location**: Seattle, Washington
**Work arrangement**: onsite
**Experience**: senior
**Job type**: Full Time Employee
**Salary**: USD 200,000-300,000 per-year-salary
**Category**: Engineering
**Industry**: Technology

**Apply**: https://jobs.lever.co/shieldai/897742de-bbb3-4b55-866d-391cf5c5848f?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply
**Canonical**: https://yubhub.co/jobs/job_c0ff5396-619

## Description

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

As Manager, Environmental Control Systems & Thermal, you will directly lead and develop a team of individual contributors responsible for environmental control systems, aircraft thermal management, and associated fluid and heat-transfer hardware on the X-BAT program, while supporting the advancement of these capabilities across Group 5 programs.

## Responsibilities

- People Leadership and Development: Manage, mentor, and develop individual contributors; set goals, give feedback, support growth, and build a high-trust, high-standard team.

- Team Planning and Execution: Set priorities, ownership, staffing, and execution cadence for X-BAT and Group 5 work; remove blockers and manage dependencies.

- Technical Direction and Review: Guide ECS and thermal architecture, trades, and design reviews across thermal environments, cooling, airflow, ducting, heat exchangers, fluid circuits, and related hardware.

- Requirements, Risk, and Maturity: Set expectations for requirements, reviews, verification, risk management, configuration control, and design release through flight-ready hardware.

- Vehicle Integration and Interfaces: Resolve interfaces with structures, propulsion, avionics, EWIS, payloads, manufacturing, systems engineering, and test teams.

- Test and Flight Readiness: Lead component, qualification, ground, and flight test planning; ensure data, anomaly resolution, and corrective actions support hardware delivery.

- Hardware and Suppliers: Set expectations for components, specifications, SOWs, supplier reviews, prototype builds, and acceptance activities.

- Hands-On Technical Leadership: Engage in first-principles analysis and root-cause investigations, coach engineers, and unblock complex technical problems.

- Communication and Accountability: Represent the team in program and engineering reviews; communicate decisions, risks, progress, resources, and dependencies.

## Requirements

- Clearance required: US Citizens Only & Must have an Active Secret or higher clearance.

- Experience: 8+ years in aerospace environmental control systems, thermal engineering, fluid systems, or comparable aircraft mechanical systems development.

- People Leadership: Experience directly managing and developing individual contributors, including setting expectations, giving feedback, and supporting career growth.

- Education: B.S. or M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related technical discipline.

- Core Fundamentals: Deep understanding of thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluid dynamics, and aircraft thermal management.

- System Development Leadership: Ability to guide architecture, requirements, analysis, design, integration, and verification through hardware delivery.

- Technical Judgment and Communication: Sound engineering judgment, early risk identification, and clear communication across technical and program teams.

- Team Culture: Record of working hard, building trust, maintaining high standards, and treating others with kindness.

## Preferred Qualifications

- Experience managing engineers on UAV, autonomous aircraft, fighter, tactical aircraft, or other high-performance aerospace programs.

- Experience with Group 5 aircraft, aircraft-level thermal management, ECS, or integrated fluid and thermal systems.

- Hands-on experience with thermal and fluid testing, instrumentation, data acquisition, model correlation, or flight-test troubleshooting.

- Experience with first-principles analysis, fluid-thermal network modeling, CFD, or thermal-analysis tools such as FloEFD, STAR-CCM+, Thermal Desktop, Amesim, or Flowmaster.

- Familiarity with aerospace environmental, qualification, and airworthiness practices, including MIL-STD-810, MIL-HDBK-516, RTCA DO-160, and SAE AIR or ARP standards.

- Experience with aerospace suppliers, COTS or custom components, technical specifications, SOWs, and prototype or vehicle-level test setups.

- Experience hiring, onboarding, and scaling a small engineering team in a rapid R&D or production environment.

- Advanced degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related discipline.

## Skills

### Required
- thermodynamics
- heat transfer
- fluid dynamics
- aircraft thermal management
- mechanical engineering
- aerospace engineering

### Nice to have
- UAV
- autonomous aircraft
- Group 5 aircraft
- thermal management
- ECS
- fluid-thermal network modeling
- CFD
- FloEFD
- STAR-CCM+
- Thermal Desktop
- Amesim
- Flowmaster

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Source: [Apply at jobs.lever.co](https://jobs.lever.co/shieldai/897742de-bbb3-4b55-866d-391cf5c5848f?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply)