a16z Staff Field Solutions Engineer (R5343)
Summary
Field Solutions Engineer at Shield AI translates customer defense mission needs into technical solutions using autonomy software and simulation systems, supporting demos and proposals while collaborating with cross-functional teams.
Job Description:
Shield AI is hiring a Hivemind Field Solutions Engineer to support technical sales, customer engagements, demonstrations, and capture activities for Hivemind across the Americas region.
This role will serve as a customer-facing technical expert for Hivemind, helping translate customer mission needs into credible, technically feasible solutions. The FSE will partner closely with Business Development, Product, Engineering, Customer Engagement, and Program teams to support demos, technical interchange meetings, RFIs, RFPs, white papers, and customer-specific solution development.
This position requires a strong technical foundation in autonomy, mission software, simulation, and AI-enabled systems. The ideal candidate will bring direct experience with Department of War simulation environments, live-virtual-constructive training and test ecosystems, synthetic environments, image-generation systems, and/or synthetic data workflows. This person should be comfortable explaining complex technical systems to customers, shaping demos around mission objectives, and feeding customer insights back into product and engineering teams.
The Field Solutions Engineering team acts as a BD force multiplier, bridging Shield AI’s technical roadmap to customer needs and ensuring customer-facing solutions are accurate, feasible, and mission-relevant.
This role will be based in Orlando, Florida.
Required qualifications:
- 7+ years of experience in solutions engineering, field applications engineering, systems engineering, technical sales, autonomy, robotics, simulation, defense software, or related technical customer-facing roles.
- Strong technical understanding of autonomy, AI-enabled systems, mission software, simulation environments, or complex defense technology systems.
- Experience supporting customer-facing technical engagements such as demos, technical briefings, proposal support, integration discussions, or technical interchange meetings.
- Demonstrated experience with one or more of the following areas: Department of War simulation systems, live-virtual-constructive environments, synthetic training environments, synthetic data generation, image-generation systems, simulation-based test and evaluation, or mission rehearsal workflows.
- Ability to translate customer mission needs into technically feasible solution concepts, requirements, demos, and product feedback.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to technical, operational, BD, and leadership audiences.
- Ability to work cross-functionally with Business Development, Product Management, Engineering, Customer Engagement, and Program teams.
- Strong judgment in representing product capabilities, limitations, and roadmap dependencies to customers.
- Ability to manage ambiguity, prioritize competing demands, and execute in a fast-paced environment.
- Willingness and ability to travel for customer engagements, demonstrations, exercises, and internal meetings.
Preferred qualifications:
- Direct experience supporting Department of War simulation, modeling and simulation, test and evaluation, training, experimentation, or mission rehearsal programs.
- Experience with LVC architectures, simulation interoperability, synthetic environments, constructive entities, digital twins, or operational test environments.
- Experience with image-generation systems, synthetic imagery, AI-generated training data, computer vision datasets, sensor simulation, or perception model evaluation.
- Hands-on experience with Python, Linux, APIs, SDKs, simulation tooling, autonomy software, robotics middleware, or technical prototyping.
- Familiarity with autonomy development workflows, including simulation-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, software-in-the-loop, mission rehearsal, test automation, or scenario generation.
- Experience working with U.S. DoD customers, defense primes, government labs, test ranges, training organizations, or operational units.
- Experience supporting proposals, RFIs, RFPs, white papers, technical volumes, or capture activities.
- Prior military, defense, aerospace, robotics, or advanced simulation experience.
- Active U.S. security clearance.
Skills
As published by lever · 19 questions · 9 written answers
Basics
Resume/CV, Full name, Email, Phone, Current location, Current company, LinkedIn URL, Twitter URL, GitHub URL, Portfolio URL, Other website
Short answers (1)
- Please state your full legal name:
Pick from a list (9)
- Are you authorized to work in the United States?
- Will you require sponsorship for employment now or in the future?
- This position may require access to information and technology that is subject to export controls, such as EAR. Are you any of the following?
- Shield AI provides technology, services, and support to the United States military and allied forces with their various missions. If selected for employment with Shield AI, your contributions will directly relate to and/or support these missions. Are there any reasons why you would not be able to fully contribute in support of the U.S. military and allied forces?
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- Are you a transitioning service member?
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Written answers (9)
- If yes, what type of sponsorship? optional
- If you selected "A protected Individual" OR "Other" to the above question, please explain further. optional
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- When are you available to start your fellowship? optional
- When are you available for full time work? optional
- What full time job(s) are you applying for?
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