Field Deployment Engineer, Autonomy & Sustainment

Shield; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Shield AI is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer, Operations & Sustainment to deploy, support, and sustain Hivemind products in real operating environments. The role is highly technical, customer‑facing, and travel‑intensive, with at least 50% travel including international deployments.

You will work directly with customers and internal teams to install, configure, validate, train, troubleshoot, and support Hivemind products, turning field lessons into durable support artifacts and runbooks.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Robotics, Aerospace, or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of experience in field engineering, forward‑deployed engineering, applications engineering, systems integration, flight test, robotics support, unmanned systems operations, technical operations, customer deployment, or similar hands‑on technical role.
• Strong technical 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, automation, data handling, and field support workflows.
• Strong troubleshooting skills across Linux or embedded systems, networking, configuration management, logs, telemetry, sensors or payloads, and operator workflows.
• Excellent problem‑solving, communication, training, expectation‑management, and escalation skills in customer‑facing environments.
• Ability to travel at least 50% of the time, including frequent domestic and international travel and multi‑week deployments.
• Ability to operate professionally in lab, flight‑test, range, customer‑site, and field environments under time pressure.
• Ability to comply with export‑control, security, safety, sensitive‑data, customer‑site, and mission‑specific operating requirements.

Responsibilities

• Deploy with customers on site globally, with a minimum expectation of 50% travel, to support installation, configuration, validation, training, troubleshooting, and sustainment of Hivemind products.
• Become an expert user of the Hivemind Enterprise software stack, autonomy modules, deployment tooling, supported configurations, and diagnostic workflows.
• Execute and improve deployment runbooks covering software install, version/configuration validation, licensing or provisioning status, pre-mission checks, log readiness, and acceptance steps.
• Provide hands‑on technical support to customer operators, maintainers, partners, and internal field teams during deployment, test, training, demonstration, and sustainment windows.
• Capture and organize field evidence for triage, including logs, telemetry, recorded data, screenshots, version/configuration state, asset context, operator notes, mission phase, and environmental constraints.
• Drive issues through the support flow: intake, severity assessment, ownership, workaround or fix delivery, customer‑safe status, closure, and learning loop.
• Convert recurring field issues, workarounds, customer questions, and training gaps into support tickets, knowledge‑base content, known‑issue records, runbooks, and product feedback.
• Partner with engineering, product, program, sustainment, licensing, safety, legal, commercial, and support teams to route issues to the right owner for seamless customer support. Support root‑cause investigation and corrective‑action validation by reproducing issues, collecting field context, testing updates, and confirming fixes or workarounds.
• Support Field Service Representative‑style obligations when required by contract, including on‑site support posture, issue intake, operator assistance, troubleshooting, documentation, escalation, and evidence capture.

Skills

C++

Python

Bash

Linux

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent in Engineering, CS, Robotics, Aerospace, or related field

Job description

Shield AI is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer, Operations & Sustainment to deploy, support, and sustain Hivemind products in real operating environments. The role is highly technical, customer‑facing, and travel‑intensive, with at least 50% travel including international deployments.

You will work directly with customers and internal teams to install, configure, validate, train, troubleshoot, and support Hivemind products, turning field lessons into durable support artifacts and runbooks.