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:
The Reliability and Maintainability Engineer is a senior individual contributor responsible for driving investigation, root cause analysis, corrective action, and reliability improvement for V-BAT field failures, repeat defects, and complex technical issues requiring deeper engineering analysis.
This role owns the technical investigation path for fielded V-BAT issues by using logs, returned hardware, test data, maintenance records, operational context, configuration data, and fleet trends to determine failure modes, root causes, contributing factors, and corrective actions. The Reliability and Maintainability Engineer partners closely with Fleet Support Engineering, Product Engineering, Quality, Manufacturing, Reliability Data Engineering, Supply Chain, and Operations to ensure field failures are understood, contained, corrected, and prevented from recurring.
This role is accountable for translating field issues into structured technical investigations, verified corrective actions, reliability improvements, maintainability improvements, and clear product health insights that improve fleet readiness, customer support, and long-term system performance.
What you'll do:
Lead engineering investigations for V-BAT field failures, repeat defects, reliability issues, maintainability issues, and complex technical escalations.
Drive Root Cause and Corrective Action investigations for fielded V-BAT issues, including containment, root cause identification, corrective action planning, verification, and closure.
Reproduce and analyze field issues using logs, returned hardware, test data, maintenance records, operational context, configuration data, environmental conditions, and customer-reported symptoms.
Partner with Fleet Support Engineers, Product Engineering, Quality, Manufacturing, Reliability Data Engineering, Supply Chain, and Operations to investigate and resolve fielded system issues.
Determine whether issues are caused by design, manufacturing, supplier quality, configuration, software, operator use, environmental exposure, maintenance practices, documentation gaps, or system integration effects.
Lead or support returned material analysis, teardown reviews, bench testing, inspection planning, fault isolation, and failure replication activities.
Document failure modes, root cause, contributing factors, containment actions, corrective actions, verification plans, and recurrence-prevention measures.
Drive corrective actions through closure by ensuring actions have owners, due dates, verification methods, and measurable field-improvement outcomes.
Identify reliability and maintainability trends from field failures, repeat defects, maintenance data, test results, and product health indicators.
Recommend new tests, inspections, diagnostics, design changes, process changes, maintenance updates, or supplier quality actions to prevent recurrence.
Provide technical input to product health reviews, reliability readouts, sustainment reviews, fleet readiness assessments, and leadership updates.
Support development and improvement of R&M processes, including field failure review, FRACAS, RCCA, reliability growth tracking, maintainability feedback loops, and corrective action management.
Work with Product Engineering to ensure field-failure findings are translated into design improvements, retrofit plans, software updates, service actions, or configuration changes where appropriate.
Work with Quality and Manufacturing to determine whether failures are linked to process escapes, inspection gaps, workmanship issues, supplier defects, or production variation.
Work with Fleet Support and Operations to understand operational impact, maintenance burden, customer effects, and urgency of fielded system issues.
Provide clear technical recommendations on containment, inspection, repair, replacement, retrofit, service guidance, or fleet-level mitigation.
Communicate investigation findings, risks, corrective actions, and verification status clearly to technical teams, sustainment leadership, and cross-functional stakeholders.
Support X-BAT lessons learned where V-BAT reliability, maintainability, and field-failure experience can inform future design, sustainment, diagnostics, repairability, and lifecycle planning.
Required qualifications:
Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, Reliability Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
5+ years of experience in reliability engineering, maintainability engineering, failure analysis, systems engineering, quality engineering, aviation sustainment, product support, manufacturing engineering, or complex hardware sustainment.
Demonstrated experience leading technical investigations for field failures, repeat defects, hardware issues, system-level issues, or complex product performance problems.
Experience driving Root Cause and Corrective Action investigations from initial problem statement through containment, root cause, corrective action, verification, and closure.
Strong ability to analyze hardware, software behavior, logs, test data, returned material, field reports, configuration history, maintenance records, and operational context.
Familiarity with structured problem-solving and failure-analysis methods such as 5 Whys, fault tree analysis, fishbone diagrams, 8D, FMEA/FMECA, FRACAS, fault isolation, or similar methods.
Ability to distinguish between design, manufacturing, supplier quality, configuration, software, operator, environmental, maintenance, and documentation-related contributors.
Experience working across Product Engineering, Fleet Support, Quality, Manufacturing, Reliability Data Engineering, Supply Chain, and Operations to resolve technical issues.
Strong technical judgment and problem-solving skills, including the ability to investigate ambiguous field reports, identify likely failure modes, and define practical next steps.
Ability to convert technical findings into clear corrective actions, verification plans, risk assessments, and product or process improvement recommendations.
Experience supporting customer-impacting technical issues in aviation, unmanned systems, robotics, defense, manufacturing, aerospace, or complex electromechanical systems.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to document technical findings, investigation rationale, corrective actions, and leadership-level summaries.
Ability to operate independently as a senior technical IC and drive cross-functional accountability without direct authority.
Ability to balance engineering rigor, investigation depth, field urgency, customer impact, and fleet-readiness needs.
Preferred qualifications:
Experience with unmanned aircraft systems, aviation sustainment, aerospace manufacturing, defense products, robotics, or deployed hardware systems.
Experience with FRACAS, reliability growth programs, fleet reliability tracking, MTBF/MTBUR analysis, Weibull analysis, reliability block diagrams, maintainability analysis, or product health dashboards.
Experience analyzing aircraft logs, flight data, maintenance data, telemetry, software logs, test results, inspection findings, or returned hardware.
Familiarity with RCCA, MRB, ECO/ECR processes, configuration management, service bulletins, maintenance releases, retrofit planning, or field service actions.
Experience investigating failures in avionics, propulsion, power systems, flight controls, structures, payload interfaces, ground equipment, support equipment, or complex electromechanical assemblies.
Experience working with Reliability Data Engineering, data analytics, or fleet health monitoring teams to identify failure trends and emerging risks.
Experience supporting fielded products where technical recommendations directly affect readiness, safety, maintainability, or customer operations.
Experience working in a startup, high-growth, defense technology, aerospace, robotics, or advanced manufacturing environment.
Advanced degree in Engineering, Reliability Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related discipline preferred but not required.
