Forward Deployed Engineer - Operations & Sustainment

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, Shield AI’s technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube. 

Job Description:

Shield AI builds intelligent systems that protect service members and civilians. Our products include Hivemind autonomy software and V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and our teams support customers and operations across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. 

The Forward Deployed Engineer, Operations & Sustainment is a highly technical, customer-facing role focused on deploying, supporting, and sustaining Hivemind products in real operating environments. This role bridges field deployment, customer operations, technical troubleshooting, training, and sustainment. 

This is a travel-intensive role. Candidates must be willing and able to travel at least 50% of the time, including frequent domestic and international trips, customer-site work, test events, training events, and multi-week deployments as program needs require. 

In this role, you will work directly with customers and internal teams to install, configure, validate, train, troubleshoot, and support Hivemind products. The role requires strong technical judgment, clear customer communication, comfort operating under field pressure, and the discipline to turn field lessons into durable support artifacts: runbooks, supported baselines, evidence packages, known-issue records, escalation paths, customer-safe updates, and product feedback. 

What you'll do:

• Deploy with customers on site globally, with an expectation of 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, 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. 

Projects you might work on:

• Deploying Hivemind software and autonomy capabilities during customer integration events, exercises, test campaigns, demonstrations, or operational support windows. 

• Building deployment-to-sustainment handoff packages with supported baselines, configuration checklists, evidence checklists, known issues, escalation contacts, and training material. 

• Standing up a repeatable support flow so field issues move from informal chats and ad hoc engineering asks into a durable support hub, severity model, owner route, and closure loop. 

• Troubleshooting field behavior across software, autonomy, networking, telemetry, configuration, sensors, operator workflows, and customer environment constraints. 

• Creating customer-safe documentation that helps operators and maintainers self-serve routine issues while preserving the right escalation path for mission-critical problems. 

Required qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Robotics, Aerospace, or a 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 a 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, release packages, sensors or payloads, and operator workflows. 

• Excellent problem-solving, communication, training, expectation-management, and escalation skills in customer-facing environments. 

• Ability to write clear field notes, deployment records, troubleshooting guides, evidence packages, and support updates that engineering and support teams can act on. 

• Willingness and 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. 

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience with autonomy, robotics, defense aviation, unmanned aircraft, deployed defense systems, flight test, payload integration, sensors, operator systems, or edge compute environments. 

• Experience supporting defense, government, allied, or international customers in operational, test, training, or overseas environments. 

• Experience building or scaling a support, field-service, customer-success, sustainment, or applications-engineering function during an early product rollout. 

• Experience with enterprise software deployment, customer support, licensing, provisioning, release management, configuration baselines, or offline/air-gapped operating environments. 

• Hands-on experience with recorded-data analysis, diagnostic tooling, telemetry review, networking tools, system health checks, or support automation. 

• FAA Part 107, military aviation or maintenance background, UAS operator experience, flight-test experience, systems engineering experience, or prior Field Service Representative experience. 

• Experience using GenAI tools to accelerate troubleshooting, documentation, knowledge capture, data review, or support workflow automation. 

• Active or prior security clearance, or eligibility to obtain one when required by program or customer need. 

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Full-time regular employee offer package:

Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity

Temporary employee offer package:

Pay within range listed above + temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)

Salary compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, licenses and certifications, and specific work location. All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check. Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits. Please speak to your talent acquisition representative for more information.

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Shield AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.