Deputy Chief Engineer, Autonomous Air Vehicle

Applied Methods Ltd; Seattle (WA); Hybrid; USD 250,000 - 350,000; Full time

Job summary

Shield AI seeks a Deputy Chief Engineer for the X-BAT division in Seattle to lead cross-functional engineering activities across aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, avionics, flight controls, software, autonomy, and manufacturing. The role requires ensuring airworthiness, managing risks, and guiding trade studies while reporting to the X-BAT Air Vehicle Lead.

The ideal candidate has extensive aircraft development leadership experience, strong system-level judgment, and the ability to work with

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• 12+ years of progressive experience developing complex aircraft, military aerospace systems, autonomous aircraft, or similarly integrated aerospace products.
• Demonstrated technical leadership on an aircraft-development program, preferably as a Chief Engineer, Deputy Chief Engineer, Air Vehicle Lead, Systems Engineering Lead, Integrated Product Team Lead, or equivalent.
• Broad understanding of aircraft design and integration across multiple engineering disciplines, with the technical judgment to identify critical interfaces and system-level consequences.
• Experience taking an aircraft or similarly complex aerospace system through multiple lifecycle stages, such as requirements development, preliminary and critical design, fabrication, integration, ground test, flight test, qualification, or production.
• Experience establishing and managing system requirements, technical baselines, interface definitions, design reviews, verification plans, and engineering risks.
• Demonstrated ability to make high-quality technical decisions with incomplete information and under aggressive program timelines.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical issues and recommendations to executive and customer audiences.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary technical deputy to the X-BAT Air Vehicle Lead, acting on their behalf when necessary and helping translate program objectives into clear engineering priorities.
• Maintain the integrity of the air vehicle’s technical baseline, including system requirements, architecture, interfaces, configuration, performance, verification, and airworthiness evidence.
• Lead the day-to-day integration of engineering activities across aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, mechanical systems, avionics, electrical systems, flight controls, software, autonomy, manufacturing, and test.
• Drive aircraft-level technical decisions and trade studies, ensuring decisions are grounded in first-principles analysis and consider downstream effects on performance, safety, cost, schedule, producibility, maintainability, and operations.
• Establish and maintain a disciplined technical-risk process, ensuring risks are identified early, assigned accountable owners, supported by mitigation plans, and retired through analysis or test.
• Lead major technical and design reviews, ensuring the aircraft is sufficiently mature to progress through fabrication, ground test, flight test, qualification, and production.
• Partner with Program Management to align technical scope with schedule, budget, staffing, supplier, and customer commitments.
• Work closely with Manufacturing and Supply Chain to ensure designs are producible, scalable, and supported by a resilient supplier base.
• Partner with Test and Flight Operations to define verification strategies, ground- and flight-test objectives, instrumentation requirements, test readiness criteria, and issue-resolution plans.
• Lead rapid root-cause investigations and corrective actions for complex aircraft-level problems identified during integration, ground test, flight test, production, or operations.
• Ensure technical decisions and engineering changes are documented, communicated, and reflected in the controlled product baseline.
• Develop the technical leadership capabilities of engineering managers, functional leads, integrated product team leads, and senior individual contributors.
• Communicate aircraft status, technical risks, decision recommendations, and recovery plans clearly to program leadership, executives, customers, and external partners.
• Foster a culture of technical excellence, urgency, ownership, intellectual honesty, and constructive challenge.

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related technical discipline

Job description

Shield AI seeks a Deputy Chief Engineer for the X-BAT division in Seattle to lead cross-functional engineering activities across aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, avionics, flight controls, software, autonomy, and manufacturing. The role requires ensuring airworthiness, managing risks, and guiding trade studies while reporting to the X-BAT Air Vehicle Lead.

The ideal candidate has extensive aircraft development leadership experience, strong system-level judgment, and the ability to work with