a16z Staff Systems Engineer, Hivemind Enterprise (R4625)
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 . Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube.
The Hivemind Platform Team at Shield AI is seeking a highly skilled and detail-oriented Requirements Engineer to join our team.
The Hivemind Enterprise product is a software development kit (SDK) that enables scalable design, deployment, evaluation, and iteration of autonomy architectures for a wide range of robotic platforms. Hivemind Enterprise is a highly technical software product providing tools and user interfaces to support multiple user personae, ranging from AI developers to test engineers.
As a Requirements Engineer for Hivemind at Shield AI, you will be a key member of a multidisciplinary systems engineering team, working collaboratively with Product, technical individual contributors, Test / Quality Assurance team members, and systems modelers to translate product user stories into clear engineering requirements with testable metrics.
This role involves defining, modeling, and validating the Hivemind software system and its applications. It is hands-on and highly collaborative, requiring expertise in requirements formulation, traceability, management, systems modeling, and knowledge of autonomous software pipelines. While the primary focus is requirements development, this role also supports system model development as part of a broader systems engineering function and requires close collaboration with systems modelers to ensure consistency between requirements, system architecture, and system behavior across the Hivemind SDK.
WHAT YOU'LL DO:
Requirements development: Work cross-functionally with Product Managers, technical individual contributors, and Quality Assurance team members to translate high-level customer feature requests into clear, detailed technical requirements aligned with product vision and roadmap. Ensure requirements are actionable by engineering teams and testable through defined metrics and acceptance criteria.
Requirements analysis: Identify dependencies, constraints, edge cases, and risks within proposed product or technical requirements. Ensure all requirements are feasible, testable, and aligned with business objectives and technical constraints.
Documentation and modeling: Author clear and well-structured documentation, including acceptance criteria, traceability links, and system models. Use requirement management tools to maintain clarity, consistency, and traceability.
Validation and verification: Collaborate with the Quality Assurance, Test, and development teams to validate that requirements are implemented correctly. Support test case development and define strategies for requirement traceability and verification coverage, ensuring that an implementation satisfies requirements.
Requirements management: Track and manage requirements throughout the development lifecycle. Maintain version control, document requirement changes, and assess the impact of updates to ensure consistent alignment with the product’s technical and functional intent.
Cross-functional alignment: Serve as the point of integration between customer intent and engineering execution. Facilitate communication across disciplines to reduce ambiguity, align expectations, and ensure clarity throughout design, development, and delivery. Participate in reviews and walkthroughs to confirm stakeholder alignment.
Systems modeling support: Collaborate with systems modelers to contribute to the development and maintenance of system models that capture system architecture, behavior, and interfaces. Use models to improve requirement clarity, traceability, and validation, and ensure alignment between requirements and the evolving system design.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:
- Bachelor’s degree with approximately 7+ years of relevant experience, or Master’s degree with approximately 5+ years of relevant experience, in Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Robotics, Software Engineering, or a closely related technical field with demonstrated experience working on complex software or autonomous systems.
- Extensive experience generating product and test requirements for software products. Familiarity with software development workflows in modern languages (C++17 or later, Python, Go, etc.).
- Working knowledge of requirements management tools such as DOORS, Jama, or Jira.
- Comprehensive understanding of robotics and autonomy concepts.
- Strong understanding of modern software engineering practices, including CI/CD, automated testing, configuration management, and software lifecycle processes.
4+ years of experience in systems engineering or quality assurance roles supporting aerospace, defense, or other safety-critical complex hardware/software systems. - Familiarity with systems engineering processes, V-model development, and lifecycle traceability.
- Proficiency in reading and interpreting engineering drawings, schematics, and interface definitions.
- Experience supporting system modeling efforts using Cameo Systems Modeler and SysML and working with system models to inform and validate requirements.
- Comfortable working in a Linux development environment.
- Strong organizational, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:
- Experience supporting or defining developer tooling, SDKs, or platforms.
- Exposure to safety-critical or mission-critical software development environments.
- Experience creating software tooling or using software APIs for common requirements and project management tools. For example, writing scripts to transfer requirements from one data base structure to another or link requirements in one
- program against test cases or product management items in other tools.
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Full-time regular employee offer package:
Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity
Temporary employee offer package:
Pay within range listed above + temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)
Salary compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, licenses and certifications, and specific work location. All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check. Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits. Please speak to your talent acquisition representative for more information.
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Shield AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.
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
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- Are you authorized to work in the United States?
- Will you require sponsorship for employment now or in the future?
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- 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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