Shield AI
Senior Staff Engineer, Mission Architect (R5876)
Washington, D.C. · Senior Staff · Full-time · Posted Sep 17, 2026
- Experience
- 5+ years; no alternatives stated.
About the job
Owns mission representations and analyses to connect military operational needs with autonomous-system capabilities, requirements, architectures, and engineering decisions.
What you'll do
- Develop mission analyses, models, threads, CONOPS, and architectures to assess autonomous capabilities in military scenarios.
- Translate operational needs into traceable requirements and conduct trade studies and sensitivity analyses to identify mission drivers and capability gaps.
- Collaborate with defense stakeholders and engineering teams, and present analyses and recommendations to leadership, customers, and government agencies.
What they ask for
- 5+ years in mission engineering, systems engineering, operational analysis, modeling and simulation, or a related discipline.
- Experience in mission-thread analysis, force-on-force analysis, capability-gap analysis, CONOPS development, or military campaign modeling.
- Proficiency with SysML or other systems engineering tools alongside AFSIM, STK, MATLAB, or Python for aerospace and defense applications.
- Experience with DoD stakeholders, warfighters, and government agencies; active Secret or Top-Secret clearance, or ability to obtain one.
Nice to have
- Experience with MBSE, digital engineering, and SysML 2.0.
- Familiarity with DoD Mission Engineering methodologies, systems-of-systems engineering, DoD acquisition processes, and JCIDS.
Tools
Cameo, Sysml 2.0, AFSIM, STK, MATLAB, Python, CI/CD
AI focus
Develop mission-engineering artifacts for AI-driven autonomous capabilities and, preferably, integrate AI-driven decision-making algorithms or autonomous systems into mission engineering and operational analysis frameworks.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative