Senior Staff Engineer, Flight Control Actuation Systems (RX) (R5999)

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and 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

• As a Staff or Senior Staff Engineer (L4/L5), you will take full technical ownership of flight control actuation system design for a Group 5 UAV fighter aircraft.
• You will work from first principles to define requirements, resolve actuator and integration trades, and drive qualified flight-control actuation hardware from design through production support.
• This position requires a balance of technical rigor, rapid decision-making, and hands-on engineering to efficiently transition concepts into operational capability.
• The ideal candidate is comfortable solving complex problems, taking ownership, working within an accelerated aircraft development environment, and is motivated by getting meaningful capability into the hands of operators quickly

What you'll do

System Ownership: Define, allocate, and own the FCAS requirements and verification traceability matrix. Actuator Performance: Design and analyze control surface actuation systems, including sizing, dynamic response, bandwidth, redundancy, and failure modes. Control-Law Integration: Drive the control law-actuator interface with Flight Controls and Vehicle Management Systems, including actuator dynamics modeling and control surface authority requirements.