System Test Engineer
US$74,000 – US$110,000 / yr base salary
Posted 10 Oct 2026
Advertised as “Engineer I, Flight Test (R6219)”
BranchFactor Summary
The original posting with the fluff stripped out
- Level
- R6219
- Management level
- Individual contributor
- Employment
- On-Site
- Contract
- Full-time
| Base salary | US$74,000 – US$110,000 / yr |
|---|
Field of studyScience, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (or related)
Study levelBachelor's
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 www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube.
Job Description:
As an System Test Engineer I, you will support the integration, verification, and validation of Hivemind Mission Autonomy across a variety of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and mission applications. You will work with experienced test, systems, software, autonomy, hardware, and program teams to help prepare, execute, document, and improve system-level test activities.
This is a hands-on engineering role for an early-career candidate interested in autonomy, robotics, unmanned systems, simulation, software-and-hardware integration, and flight-test operations. You will help evaluate whether autonomy capabilities perform as intended in simulation, laboratory, hardware-in-the-loop, software-in-the-loop, and, when applicable, flight-test environments.
Under the guidance of senior engineers, you will contribute to test planning, test execution, data collection, issue investigation, and technical documentation. You will also have opportunities to support integration events with internal teams, external platform partners, and customers.
What you'll do:
- Support test planning and execution for integration of Hivemind Mission Autonomy capabilities onto unmanned platforms and mission-system configurations.
- Assist senior test engineers with defining test objectives, expected system behavior, acceptance criteria, verification methods, and test schedules.
- Help develop, execute, and maintain system-level test procedures, test cases, checklists, and test configurations.
- Support setup, configuration, operation, and troubleshooting of software-in-the-loop (SIL), hardware-in-the-loop (HIL), simulation, laboratory, and automated test environments.
- Assist with installation, configuration, and verification of test hardware, software, networks, ground-control equipment, sensors, radios, computing systems, and supporting tools as applicable.