Manager, Software Engineering; R5966

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 (Use the "Apply for this Job" box below). Follow Shield AI on Linked In, X, Instagram, and You Tube.

Hivemind is looking for an experienced Engineering Manager to lead our Shared Services Engineering team.

The Shared Services team is a product-oriented, full-stack engineering team that builds and operates common services, SDKs, APIs, and customer-facing applications connecting Shield's products. These capabilities reduce duplicated engineering and help create a consistent Shield experience across product types.

You will lead the team as it identifies shared needs, establishes ownership, and delivers reliable, secure, and well-supported solutions. You will treat the team's capabilities as products, maintaining a roadmap informed by external customers and internal engineering teams.

This is a technical, hands-on management role. You will guide architecture and delivery, remain engaged in complex engineering decisions, and build a team that owns its systems from design through production operation.

• Build and lead the Shared Services Engineering team, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development
• Define and execute the team's roadmap, balancing customer needs, cross-product priorities, operational health, and long-term technical investment
• Partner with product and engineering teams to identify shared capabilities, establish ownership and integration boundaries, and guide initiatives including shared authentication, telemetry integrations, the Customer Support Portal, and future public telemetry APIs
• Lead the architecture, delivery, and operation of shared services, SDKs, APIs, and customer-facing systems
• Establish secure, reliable, documented, and versioned interfaces for internal engineering teams and external customers
• Communicate plans, progress, risks, and tradeoffs across engineering, product, and organizational leadership

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, including experience managing engineers responsible for production software
• Demonstrated technical judgment in the design and operation of full-stack applications, backend services, APIs, or distributed systems
• Strategic systems thinking and the ability to turn recurring needs across products into coherent, reusable capabilities
• Track record of setting technical direction, making thoughtful tradeoffs, and executing across immediate and long-term priorities
• Effective cross-functional leadership, with the ability to build alignment and trusted partnerships across engineering, product, and organizational stakeholders

• Track record of leading teams that build shared services and customer-facing applications from scratch and own them through production operation
• Depth in one or more relevant domains, such as identity and authentication, public APIs and SDKs, or Open Telemetry and high-volume telemetry data
• Experience establishing a new engineering capability, consolidating fragmented ownership, or driving adoption across multiple product teams
• Experience building and operating secure, reliable software in regulated or compliance-driven environments

$170,000 - $310,000 a year

San Diego, CA pay range: $170,000 - $250,000

San Mateo, CA pay range: $200,000 - $310,000

Full-time regular employee offer package:

Pay within range…