Senior Staff Engineer, Weapons Integration - Ranger (R6323)
Seattle · USD 210,000-320,000 / year · Onsite · Posted Oct 18, 2026
At a glance
- Workplace
- Onsite
- Location
- Seattle
- Salary
- USD 210,000-320,000 / year
About the role
- Shield AI is seeking a Senior Staff Engineer for Weapons Integration - Ranger to own architecture, requirements development, and integration strategy across aircraft systems.
- The role serves as a technical authority for weapons integration, leading complex trade studies and system of systems analyses.
- Candidates will define and guide integration and verification campaigns from laboratory testing through flight test and fielding.
Responsibilities
- Own architecture, requirements development and allocation, and integration strategy across data storage, weapons, payloads, avionics, and supporting aircraft systems.
- Establish performance budgets, interface definitions, and verification criteria that align subsystem designs with vehicle level objectives.
- Serve as a technical authority for weapons integration, leading complex trade studies and system of systems analyses to balance performance, latency, bandwidth, storage capacity, reliability, power, cost, and schedule.
- Resolve architectural conflicts and guide consequential hardware and software decisions.
- Define and guide integration and verification campaigns from laboratory and hardware in the loop testing through flight test and fielding.
- Partner with safety, airworthiness, and certification teams to establish compliance approaches addressing applicable MIL Standards and objectives, and drive resolution of critical anomalies and performance gaps.
- Lead multidisciplinary technical reviews and readiness assessments, aligning engineering teams, program leadership, customers, and partners on architecture decisions, technical maturity, integration risks, and mitigation plans.
- Mentor engineers and establish consistent practices for requirements quality, interface management, configuration control, and verification.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
- 10 or more years of relevant aerospace or defense experience, including at least 5 years developing and integrating weapons or complex aircraft mission systems.
- Demonstrated technical ownership of mission system architectures spanning mission computing, data storage, avionics, payloads, and communications, including line of sight and beyond line of sight systems.
- Experience translating operational needs into requirements, performance budgets, interface definitions, and hardware and software specifications.
- Strong knowledge of systems engineering and product development practices, including requirements decomposition, architecture trade studies, interface management, configuration control, technical risk management, and verification and validation.
- Experience applying Modular Open Systems Approach principles and relevant frameworks such as Open Mission Systems, Government Reference Architectures, or modular avionics standards.
- Demonstrated ability to lead multidisciplinary technical teams and supplier engineering activities from architecture definition through integration, test, and fielding.
- Experience guiding design reviews, resolving complex integration issues, assessing technical maturity, and supporting safety and airworthiness compliance activities involving applicable DO 178C and DO 254 objectives.
- Strong technical communication and influencing skills, with experience presenting architecture decisions, performance evidence, technical risks, and recommendations to engineering leaders, executives, and customers.
- Active U.S. Secret security clearance and the ability to obtain and maintain a Top Secret clearance.
Preferred qualifications
- Master’s or PhD in Aerospace, Systems, or Electrical Engineering
- Hands-on experience with flight test operations and mission system validation
- Direct experience integrating advanced sensors, autonomy, AI-enabled payloads, or guided weapons
- Background in model-based systems engineering (MBSE) and SysML tools
- Strong knowledge of current aircraft mission systems vendors and capabilities
- Active DoD Top Secret clearance
Benefits
- Bonus
- Benefits
- Equity
Skills
- SysML
- Open Mission Systems
- Modular Open Systems Approach
- MBSE
