Senior Avionics Engineer Lead for Autonomous Aircraft

Shield; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus

Equity

Benefits

Job summary

Shield AI is seeking an experienced Lead, Electrical Engineer to guide the architecture, design, integration, and delivery of advanced electrical systems for autonomous aircraft. You will remain deeply hands-on while managing a small team and setting direction for avionics development.

This role offers growth into broader avionics leadership with collaboration across firmware, software, ME, manufacturing, and systems engineering, and a clear path to scale the organization.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years of industry experience in electrical engineering, including multiple product development cycles.
• Experience leading technically complex electrical or avionics designs from concept through production.
• Strong fundamentals in circuit design, embedded systems, hardware architecture, analysis, verification, and debugging.
• Experience delivering products across EE, ME, firmware, software, manufacturing, and systems engineering disciplines.
• Demonstrated ability to lead, mentor, and develop engineers while maintaining hands-on technical ownership.
• Proven track record of shipping high-quality products, navigating ambiguity, resolving obstacles, and delivering against challenging schedules.
• Strong communication, collaboration, prioritization, and cross-functional leadership skills.
• Demonstrated ownership, initiative, sound technical judgment, and commitment to engineering excellence.
• Ability to obtain a Secret/SAR-level security clearance desired.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture, design, integration, and production release of electrical systems and subsystems for autonomous aircraft and support equipment.
• Own technical decisions across complex architectures involving FPGAs, power management, analog and digital circuitry, servos, microcontrollers, sensors, radios, and embedded systems.
• Remain hands-on with part selection, schematic capture, simulation, analysis, verification, debugging, design reviews, and production support.
• Lead and develop a team of electrical engineers through technical mentorship, coaching, performance feedback, and effective delegation.
• Establish technical direction, priorities, and development plans for your team in alignment with program and aircraft objectives.
• Partner closely with firmware, software, mechanical, manufacturing, supply chain, test, and systems engineering teams to deliver integrated products.
• Support the design and integration of embedded systems and sensors that enable aircraft autonomy and AI capabilities.
• Define technical requirements, product features, interfaces, and verification strategies.
• Own project execution for your team, including schedules, risks, dependencies, deliverables, and cross-functional communication.
• Lead and participate in architecture, design, integration, and production readiness reviews.
• Help develop automated test solutions and improve hardware development, verification, and production processes.
• Identify and implement improvements that increase engineering efficiency, product quality, aircraft reliability, and team effectiveness.
• Build the technical and organizational foundation required to scale the avionics engineering team over time.

Skills

Electrical leadership

System architecture

FPGA design

Power electronics

Embedded systems

Team mentorship

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering

Tools

Altium Designer

MATLAB/Simulink

LabVIEW

Job description

Shield AI is seeking an experienced Lead, Electrical Engineer to guide the architecture, design, integration, and delivery of advanced electrical systems for autonomous aircraft. You will remain deeply hands-on while managing a small team and setting direction for avionics development.

This role offers growth into broader avionics leadership with collaboration across firmware, software, ME, manufacturing, and systems engineering, and a clear path to scale the organization.