Staff Engineer, Electrical (R4199)
Shield AI
Other Engineering
San Diego, CA, USA
USD 150k-220k / year + Equity
Posted on Dec 20, 2025
Founded in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed deep-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include the V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, Hivemind Enterprise, and the Hivemind Vision product lines. With nine offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific, Shield AI’s technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube.
Job Description:
Shield AI is seeking an exceptional Electrical Engineer to join the team in building our next-generation autonomous aircraft. Joining now places you at the earliest stages of development, tackling open-ended design challenges that will shape the future of autonomous flight. You will collaborate closely with other Electrical Engineers, Mechanical, Thermal, CAD, Hardware Test, Reliability, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, and other cross-functional teams. This is an opportunity to shape our team processes and own critical aspects of our hardware development.
What you'll do:
- Own full product and circuit design for flight critical subsystems. This includes analog, digital, high-speed, power, compute, sensors, FPGA, and other functional blocks as needed
- Design for high reliability in challenging environments. Including temperature, altitude, radiation, and vibration
- Full-cycle hardware development: Own the entire flow — concept, modeling, worst case analysis, schematic capture, simulation, prototyping, design reiteration for improving design maturity, testing and validation
- PCB ownership: Drive PCB layout and design with ECAD engineers, optimizing for power density, EMI, thermal, and manufacturability
- Design for Safety, Manufacturability and Reliability: Design robust systems keeping in mind best practices for safety, manufacturing and reliability
- Board Bring Up and Testing: Execute board bring up, verification, validation and HALT testing to meet rigorous aerospace reliability standards
- Cross-functional collaboration: Work closely with Mechanical, CAD, Embedded, Software, Production and various aircraft teams throughout the product lifecycle
- Design review leadership: Lead and contribute to cross-functional reviews ensuring robust, high-integrity engineering decisions
- Program execution: Manage project timelines, deliverables, and technical milestones to drive on-time, high-quality outcomes
- Mentor and lead other engineers supporting your project
Required qualifications:
- You have a B.S. in Electrical Engineering or equivalent
- You have 5+ years of experience as an Electrical Engineer
- You are experienced with: circuit design, schematic capture, component selection, circuit testing, circuit debugging, and system integration
- You have a demonstrated record of working hard, being a trustworthy teammate, holding yourself and others to high standards, and being kind to others
- Familiarity with Altium or equivalent
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Full-time regular employee offer package:
Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity
Temporary employee offer package:
Pay within range listed above + temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)
Salary compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, licenses and certifications, and specific work location. All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check. Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits. Please speak to your talent acquisition representative for more information.
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Shield AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.
150000 - 220000 USD a year