Staff Engineer, System Test Network; R6030

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 Linked In, X, Instagram, and You Tube.

Candidates for this role will join the HIL and Infrastructure team to provide network engineering support across HMS programs and projects. The role focuses on designing, developing, testing, and sustaining program-specific networks, including software-defined radios and complex radio systems that integrate devices, payloads, sensors, flight hardware, autonomy software, simulations, and supporting equipment and services. This engineer will also support shared HIL and test infrastructure and will develop and own repeatable network configurations and networking software across program and laboratory environments.

We are looking for someone who combines strong network engineering fundamentals, disciplined software development practices, and a structured approach to system testing.

• Design, build, configure, and maintain scalable network architectures for HIL laboratories, integration environments, simulation systems, and shared test infrastructure across multiple programs
• Define and manage Layer 2 and Layer 3 configurations, including addressing, VLANs, routing, multicast, quality of service, access controls, redundancy, and time-synchronization services
• Develop and maintain networking software, configuration-as-code, automation tools, and validation utilities that make lab network deployment repeatable, reviewable, and recoverable
• Integrate switches, routers, firewalls, servers, real-time compute, simulators, flight computers, sensors, radios, and other program hardware into representative HIL and program network environments, including mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) using Persistent Systems MPU5/Wave Relay, Silvus Stream Caster, and comparable tactical and SDR platforms
• Develop and execute network test plans that measure connectivity, interoperability, throughput, latency, jitter, packet loss, multicast behavior, failover, and performance under load
• Build network observability capabilities using packet capture, device telemetry, logs, metrics, alerts, dashboards, and automated health checks to identify issues before they disrupt testing
• Reproduce, isolate, and resolve complex network and distributed-system issues using Wireshark, tcpdump, traffic generators, device diagnostics, application logs, and controlled experiments
• Partner with Solutions & Integration teams to reproduce deployed networking issues, translate customer and operational feedback into representative HIL network configurations and tests, and provide second-line network support for customer demonstrations, exercises, and evaluations
• Maintain authoritative network baselines, IP address assignments, hardware inventories, cable and port maps, architecture diagrams, interface-control documentation, and change records
• Integrate network configuration and test automation into source-control and CI/CD workflows, including peer review, automated verification, deployment, rollback, and auditability
• Evaluate network equipment and technologies, support capacity planning and procurement, standardize reusable solutions, and provide technical guidance to lab users and program teams

• Typically requires a minimum of 5 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; or 3 years with a Master's degree; or equivalent practical experience in network engineering, systems integration, test infrastructure, or software development.
• Strong knowledge of Ethernet and TCP/IP networking, including switching, routing, subnetting, VLANs, multicast, DNS, DHCP, network address translation, quality of service, and common transport protocols.
• Hands-on experience configuring and troubleshooting managed switches, routers, firewalls, Linux hosts, and networked computing systems in laboratory, development, or production environments.
• Proficiency in Python or a comparable language for network automation, configuration generation, API integration, test development, data processing, or infrastructure tooling.
• Experience developing and executing…