Head of Engineering Excellence & Design Standards

Shield AI; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 209,000 - 314,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Benefits

Equity

Job summary

Shield AI is building the world’s best AI pilot to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems. The senior technical leader will define and operationalize engineering design standards across the company, driving consistency, rigor, and scalability in design, analysis, certification, CAD, documentation, and configuration management.

This high-impact individual contributor role spans multiple engineering disciplines, elevating engineering quality without slowing execution.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in aerospace or high-performance hardware design environments.
• Deep experience with engineering standards and design rigor.
• Broad technical background across multiple domains (mechanical, aerospace, systems, etc.).
• Experience defining or applying design standards, documentation practices, and configuration management.
• Familiarity with MIL-STD-810, DO-160, and ASME Y14.5 (GD&T).
• Ability to influence senior engineers and drive alignment across teams.
• Proven track record of improving engineering quality, consistency, and scalability.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to articulate standards and expectations.

Responsibilities

• Establish and own engineering design standards across programs, including XBAT and VBAT.
• Define and standardize best practices for aerospace design, analysis workflows, and system-level engineering rigor.
• Develop standards for CAD usage, drawing quality, standard notes, release processes, and engineering documentation.
• Manufacturing & supply chain handoff including EBOM and MBOM creation along with driving part demand.
• Build and mature an engineering excellence framework that scales with the company.
• Partner with engineering leadership to align teams on consistent ways of working.
• Ensure standards are practical, accessible, and consistently applied across teams.
• Influence design decisions and engineering processes across disciplines without becoming a bottleneck.
• Support both near-term program execution and long-term scalability of engineering processes.
• Drive improvements in configuration management, documentation quality, and design consistency.
• Ability to obtain a S//SAR level security clearance desired.

Skills

Aerospace design experience

Standards and governance

Documentation practices

Configuration management

Cross-team influencing

Strong communication

Tools

MIL-STD-810

DO-160

ASME Y14.5 (GD&T)

Job description

Shield AI is building the world’s best AI pilot to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems. The senior technical leader will define and operationalize engineering design standards across the company, driving consistency, rigor, and scalability in design, analysis, certification, CAD, documentation, and configuration management.

This high-impact individual contributor role spans multiple engineering disciplines, elevating engineering quality without slowing execution.