Engineer I, GNC (R4003)

Shield AI

1001-5000

United States

Location

Dallas US

Salary

(Yearly)

(Hourly)

Undisclosed

Category

Robotics Engineer

Date posted

October 17, 2025

Job type

Full-time

Experience level

Mid level

Founded in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed defense technology company whose mission is to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems. In pursuit of this mission, Shield AI is building the world’s best AI pilot. Its AI pilot, Hivemind, has flown a fighter jet (F-16), a vertical takeoff and landing drone (V-BAT), and a quadcopter (Nova). The company has offices in San Diego, Dallas, Washington DC and abroad. Shield AI’s products and people are currently in the field actively supporting operations with the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. allies.

The GNC team focuses on researching and developing state-of-the-art algorithms that drive high-performance flight for the VBAT and XBAT, both vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft. As a Controls Engineer on this team, you’ll work on an agile, mission-driven, and values-focused team grounded in first principles to push the boundaries of the state-of-the-art.

WHAT YOU’LL DO:

Design, develop, and optimize flight control systems for a family of advanced unmanned VTOL vehicles

Execute simulations and real-world tests of VTOL vehicles

Extract linear aircraft state space models from nonlinear models

Update system models leveraging system identification techniques, both offline and online

Root-cause, triage, and resolve flight control system defects

Improve test infrastructure, including improvements to unit test coverage, simulation fidelity, analysis tools, etc.

Support roadmapping and planning for next-generation flight control systems

Work with hardware teams to design and select servos, propulsion systems, inertial navigation systems, air data units, vision-based navigation systems, etc.