Director, Engineering Excellence & Design Standards

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 is building the world’s best AI pilot to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems. As we scale both our proven VBAT platform and develop next-generation systems like XBAT, we are investing in how we build—not just what we build. We are seeking a senior technical leader to define and operationalize engineering design standards across the company. This position is focused on establishing engineering excellence—driving consistency, rigor, and scalability across design, analysis, certification, CAD, documentation, and configuration management. This is a high-impact individual contributor role with broad scope across multiple engineering disciplines, responsible for raising the bar on engineering quality without slowing down execution.

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.

10+ years of experience in aerospace or high-performance hardware design environments

Deep experience working within organizations that maintain strong engineering standards and design rigor

Broad technical background across multiple engineering domains (mechanical, aerospace, systems, etc.)

Experience defining or applying design standards, documentation practices, and configuration management systems

Familiarity with industry standards such as MIL-STD-810, DO-160, and ASME Y14.5 (GD&T)

Demonstrated ability to influence senior engineers and drive alignment across teams

Strong track record of improving engineering quality, consistency, and scalability

Excellent communication skills with the ability to clearly articulate standards and expectations across technical audiences

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