Chief Engineer, Autonomy — Space Domain
Chief Engineer, Autonomy — Space Domain at Shield AI — Washington, DC, US
- Company: Shield AI
- Location: Washington, DC, US
- Employment type: Full-time
- Salary: $210,880–$316,320 a year
- Posted: 2026-06-22
About this role
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.
Shield AI builds trusted autonomy for national-security space missions. The Chief Engineer, Autonomy — Space Domain is the senior technical authority responsible for defining, delivering, and sustaining autonomy capabilities that convert distributed space, ground, and payload resources into timely, decision-quality data products.
This leader owns the technical vision, system architecture, execution rigor, risk posture, verification strategy, and operational readiness of the space-autonomy solution across its lifecycle: concept development, integration, test, launch/commissioning support where applicable, on-orbit operations, software updates, and mission evolution. The role ensures that autonomy performs reliably across multi-constellation and multi-orbit mission environments, supports resilient operation in constrained or contested conditions, and delivers usable information to mission users at operational tempo.
This is not a research position. This is a position focused on delivering mission-ready autonomy systems that perform in real-world operational environments.
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