Sr. Staff Engineer, GNC (R6391) at Shield AI in Seattle, WA

Job description

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. What You'll Do • Build and lead the Ranger G&C team. Define staffing needs, establish clear technical ownership, and develop the team through mentorship, design reviews, and hands-on problem solving. • Own the G&C development roadmap. Translate program objectives into a phased plan for requirements development, algorithm maturation, simulation capabilities, software integration, verification, and flight testing. Establish measurable milestones and align priorities with program leadership and partner teams. • Own project execution and delivery. Scope and estimate work, allocate resources, manage schedules and cross-team dependencies, and track progress against deliverables. Identify technical and schedule risks early, drive mitigation plans, and communicate trade-offs and resource needs. • Define and deliver the G&C architecture, including Auto-Taxi and ATOL algorithms, inner- and outer-loop control laws, guidance, trajectory validation, flight-mode logic, and control allocation. Maintain stable, predictable aircraft performance through actuator constraints, disturbances, uncertainty, and defined degraded conditions. • Lead integration between flight autonomy and mission autonomy through A-GRA-aligned interfaces. Establish clear responsibilities for mission-level decision-making and vehicle-level execution, including command validation, flight-mode transitions, status reporting, and contingency coordination. • Lead development and validation of high-fidelity 6DOF simulation capabilities. Establish model fidelity requirements, validation plans, and uncertainty bounds to support control development, vehicle-level trades, and credible pre-flight performance predictions. • Own the G&C verification strategy and supporting compliance evidence. Define requirements-based acceptance criteria and verification coverage across linear and nonlinear analysis, Monte Carlo campaigns, sensitivity and failure studies, and software- and hardware-in-the-loop testing. • Drive cross-disciplinary trades with propulsion, aerodynamics, actuation, state estimation, embedded software, and autonomy teams. Translate G&C performance needs into subsystem requirements and resolve interface, timing, and integration issues. • Lead G&C preparation and analysis for ground and flight testing, including test-point selection, envelope-expansion planning, pre-flight predictions, and post-flight reconstruction. Provide evidence-based flight-readiness recommendations, resolve simulation-to-test discrepancies, and drive verified corrective changes. What You'll Bring Required Qualifications • 10+ years of experience in flight controls, GNC, or autonomous aircraft development, with demonstrated technical ownership of flight-vehicle systems from requirements and design through integration and flight test. • Experience building or leading engineering teams, including establishing technical direction, assigning ownership, mentoring engineers, and delivering complex development efforts through coordinated team execution. • Demonstrated ownership of technical roadmaps and project execution, including work scoping, effort estimation, staffing plans, milestone definition, dependency management, and technical risk reduction. • Deep expertise in aircraft flight dynamics, classical and modern control theory, nonlinear systems, and fixed-wing control law design, including stability, performance, and robustness across the operating envelope. • Strong experience developi