Staff Electrical Engineer, Hardware Test
Seattle · USD 185,000-275,000 / year · 8+ years experience · Onsite · Posted Sep 25, 2026
At a glance
- Experience
- 8+ years experience
- Workplace
- Onsite
- Location
- Seattle
- Salary
- USD 185,000-275,000 / year
About the role
- Shield AI is seeking a Staff Electrical Engineer to define and lead the electrical test-equipment strategy for X-BAT hardware.
- This is a hands-on individual-contributor role responsible for establishing common architectures, engineering standards, safety practices, and lifecycle expectations.
- The role involves close collaboration with systems and design engineering to influence aircraft design through testability, interface definition, and reliability learning.
Responsibilities
- Own the technical strategy, architecture, and roadmap for electrical test equipment supporting X-BAT avionics, power, communications, actuation, and other aircraft subsystems.
- Identify program verification risks and capability gaps, converting them into prioritized investments, platform decisions, development plans, and clear technical ownership.
- Define common architectures for racks, stands, interface units, power and fault insertion, instrumentation, data acquisition, timing, automation, diagnostics, and operator interfaces.
- Lead complex or novel test-equipment programs through requirements, trade studies, architecture, detailed design, build, integration, acceptance, deployment, and sustainment.
- Set and uphold engineering standards for schematics, PCB and harness design, calibration, documentation, and release readiness.
- Establish system-safety expectations for energized test equipment, including hazard analysis, safe-state design, interlocks, isolation, emergency stops, access control, and verification of protective functions.
- Chair high-consequence architecture, design, and readiness reviews; make or drive closure on cross-domain technical decisions and unresolved risks.
- Partner with systems and design engineering to define testable requirements, electrical interfaces, built-in observability, fault isolation, and verification approaches before aircraft designs are released.
- Develop strategies for equipment reliability, availability, maintainability, calibration, obsolescence, spares, vendor support, and recovery from failures during critical test campaigns.
- Lead cross-functional root-cause investigations that span test equipment, units under test, software, facilities, manufacturing, and supplier processes.
Requirements
- B.S. in Electrical Engineering or a related STEM discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
- 8+ years of relevant industry experience developing complex electrical hardware, automated test equipment, or multidisciplinary verification systems.
- A record of leading multiple hardware development cycles and delivering equipment or products from ambiguous requirements through release, deployment, and sustained use.
- Deep expertise in several relevant domains, such as power electronics, analog and digital design, RF and communications, instrumentation, data acquisition, control systems, signal integrity, grounding, or system safety.
- Demonstrated ability to architect systems that span custom electronics, commercial instruments, harnessing, embedded control, automation software, mechanical equipment, and facility interfaces.
- Strong command of requirements decomposition, interface control, verification planning, design reviews, configuration management, acceptance testing, and technical documentation.
- Experience establishing technical standards or reusable platforms and influencing teams beyond direct project authority.
- Demonstrated success resolving complex cross-domain failures using data, first-principles reasoning, structured root-cause analysis, and disciplined corrective action.
- Ability to communicate technical decisions, risks, and tradeoffs clearly to engineers, operators, program leaders, and executives.
- A record of mentoring engineers, raising technical quality, and delivering exceptional outcomes in a fast-moving environment.
Preferred qualifications
- Experience architecting aerospace or defense ground-test, qualification-test, hardware-in-the-loop, or production-test systems for flight-critical hardware.
- Experience across several aircraft electrical domains, including high-voltage or high-power systems, batteries, motors and drives, RF, avionics networks, sensors, flight controls, or mission systems.
- Experience scaling a test capability from early prototype equipment to configuration-controlled platforms used across multiple teams, sites, or product phases.
- Experience applying safety and reliability methods such as hazard analysis, FMEA, fault-tree analysis, proof testing, fault insertion, redundancy, and safe-state verification.
- Knowledge of environmental and qualification testing such as thermal, vibration, shock, HALT, HASS, ESS, EMI or EMC, and the controls and instrumentation required to execute it well.
- Working knowledge of standards such as DO-160, MIL-STD-810, MIL-STD-461, IPC, IEEE, NFPA 70E, or equivalent standards relevant to prior work.
- Experience with calibration systems, measurement uncertainty, metrology, data traceability, equipment cybersecurity, or regulated lab and production environments.
- Experience developing capital-equipment plans, managing technical suppliers or integrators, and balancing capability, schedule, cost, and lifecycle risk.
Benefits
- Bonus
- Benefits
- Equity
- Temporary benefits package applicable after 60 days of employment for temporary employees
Skills
- Electrical Engineering
- Power Electronics
- Analog And Digital Design
- RF And Communications
- Instrumentation
- Data Acquisition
- Control Systems
- Signal Integrity
- System Safety
- Embedded Control
- Automation Software
- Harness Design
Show all 14 skills
- DO-160
- MIL-STD-810
