Forward Deployed Engineer, Operations & Sustainment - open level (R5497)
San Diego, Californiafull time
On Site
mid
H1B: no
Shield Forward Deployed Engineer responsible for deploying, supporting, and sustaining Hivemind products in operational environments. Provides technical troubleshooting and training with up to 50% travel.
Responsibilities
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.
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.
Qualification
Bachelor's degree in EngineeringProficiency writingWorking proficiency with PythonExcellent problem-solvingAbility to write clear field notesAbility to comply with export-controlExperience with autonomyExperience supporting defenseFAA Part 107Active or prior security clearance
Required
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.
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.
