Field Deployment Engineer - Autonomy & Sustainment

Fdetimes; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Shield AI is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer, Operations & Sustainment, to deploy and support Hivemind products in real operating environments. You will work closely with customers and internal teams to install, configure, validate, and train on Hivemind software across global sites.

The role requires strong technical judgement, excellent communication, and the ability to document field lessons into durable runbooks and knowledge artifacts, with a travel-heavy schedule and on-site support at

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Robotics, Aerospace, or related technical field or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years in field engineering or similar hands-on technical roles.
• Strong background in software engineering, systems integration, or autonomy-adjacent systems.
• Proficiency writing, reading, and debugging modern C++ code.
• Working proficiency with Python, Bash, or similar scripting for diagnostics and automation.
• Strong troubleshooting across Linux/embedded systems, networking, and logs.

Responsibilities

• Deploy with customers on site globally, up to 50% travel, to support installation, configuration, validation, training, troubleshooting, and sustainment of Hivemind products.
• Become an expert user of the Hivemind Enterprise software stack and Diagnostics workflows.
• Execute and improve deployment runbooks including software install, validation, licensing, and pre-mission checks.
• Provide hands-on technical support to customer operators, maintainers, partners, and internal field teams.
• Capture and organize field evidence for triage with logs, telemetry, and environment context.
• Drive issues through intake, severity assessment, ownership, and closure with learning loop.
• Convert recurring issues into knowledge-base content, runbooks, and product feedback.

Skills

C++ programming

Python scripting

Linux troubleshooting

Customer-facing communication

Field deployment

Education

Bachelor's degree in a relevant technical field

Tools

Linux

Telemetry tools

Diagnostics tooling

Job description

Shield AI is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer, Operations & Sustainment, to deploy and support Hivemind products in real operating environments. You will work closely with customers and internal teams to install, configure, validate, and train on Hivemind software across global sites.

The role requires strong technical judgement, excellent communication, and the ability to document field lessons into durable runbooks and knowledge artifacts, with a travel-heavy schedule and on-site support at