Senior Staff Customer Sustainment Engineer (R5502)
Shield AI · San Diego, United States +1 · 1mo ago
Job Description:
Shield AI builds intelligent systems that protect service members and civilians. Our products include Hivemind autonomy software and V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and our teams support customers and operations across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.
Shield AI is hiring a Senior Customer Sustainment Engineer to support Hivemind systems after they reach customers and operational teams. This role sits at the intersection of customer support, systems troubleshooting, and engineering.
Customers and forward deployed employees bring valuable operational context when they report a mission interruption, update concern, or unexpected system behavior. You will work with them to translate that context into a clear technical problem by gathering the right evidence, understanding the operating environment, narrowing the likely causes, and identifying the best path to resolution.
Some issues will be resolved through configuration changes, deployment corrections, known workarounds, or better guidance. Others will require a product or engineering change. In either case, you will stay with the issue through resolution, keep the customer informed, and make sure the outcome is captured for future use.
The role is the primary owner for Tier 1 support, handles a meaningful portion of Tier 2 troubleshooting, and can contribute to limited Tier 3 investigation when deeper technical experience is useful. Using DoD sustainment language, this is roughly the software equivalent of intermediate-level maintenance: resolve what can be addressed at that level, identify what needs depot-level repair, and provide engineering with a complete technical handoff. Product Support and core engineering teams provide the depot-level repair capability, while this role stays engaged to validate the result and close the loop with the customer.
You will work closely with Forward Deployment Engineering, Product Support Engineering, Operations & Sustainment, Product, Program, Licensing, and the core Hivemind engineering teams. The goal is straightforward: help customers return to mission-ready operation while making Hivemind easier to support over time.
What you'll do:
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Own Tier 1 customer support and incident coordination from initial report through confirmed resolution.
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Gather the information needed to understand an issue, including mission impact, software version, configuration, deployment state, logs, telemetry, screenshots, network context, and reproduction steps.
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Troubleshoot Hivemind software, APIs, licensing and provisioning, deployments, configurations, networks, operator workflows, and partner or OEM integrations.
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Separate product defects from configuration problems, environmental differences, integration issues, training needs, and feature requests.
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Resolve common technical problems, handle appropriate Tier 2 investigations, and reproduce more complex failures in lab, simulation, or representative test environments.
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Recognize issues that require Tier 3 or depot-level product repair and give engineering teams concise escalation packages that explain the impact, evidence, likely causes, work already attempted, and expected result.
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Provide customers with clear updates, practical next steps, and technically sound workarounds while investigations are in progress.
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Support software releases, upgrades, onboarding, licensing and provisioning workflows, and the transition from deployment into ongoing sustainment.
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Turn recurring issues into troubleshooting guides, known-issue records, diagnostic tools, training material, and product feedback.
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Use incident patterns to identify improvements to product reliability, diagnostics, documentation, and release readiness.
Projects you may work on:
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Investigate a mission failure after a software update by comparing logs, configurations, versions, network behavior, telemetry, and release notes.
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Reproduce an autonomy, API, or integration issue and provide engineering with the evidence needed to correct it.
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Restore an offline customer environment affected by licensing, provisioning, time synchronization, or version compatibility.
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Coordinate the technical response to a high-impact customer issue and validate the workaround or fix before closure.
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Build a diagnostic playbook for recurring deployment, configuration, networking, or operator-workflow problems.
Required qualifications:
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Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical, military, field-engineering, or technical experience.
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7+ years of hands-on experience supporting fielded, software-enabled systems in customer, operational, test, deployment, or sustainment environments.
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Experience with cyber-physical, edge, mission, robotics, autonomy, aviation, defense, industrial-control, or similarly complex deployed systems.
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Strong troubleshooting skills across software, Linux, configuration, networking, logs, telemetry, software versions, and hardware-adjacent interfaces.
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A record of owning technical issues from an incomplete initial report through diagnosis and resolution.
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Ability to read and reason about modern C++ and use existing Python, Bash, or similar scripts during troubleshooting and log analysis.
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Clear written and verbal communication with customers, operators, and engineering teams, including during time-sensitive situations.
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Ability to write useful incident records, troubleshooting guidance, engineering escalations, and customer-facing updates.
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Sound judgment when working within security, export-control, safety, customer-site, contractual, and data-handling requirements.
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Ability to possess a Secret DoD security clearance when required by customers.
Preferred qualifications:
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Experience with autonomy software, robotics, unmanned systems, aviation, defense or mission software, ground-control software, SDKs, APIs, or edge-deployed systems.
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Experience supporting fleet operations, operational-readiness events, flight or ground test campaigns, or customer-site deployments.
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Familiarity with DoD sustainment, intermediate- and depot-level maintenance concepts, or comparable field-to-engineering support models.
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Hands-on software engineering experience writing and debugging C++ and developing Python scripts or tools for diagnostics, automation, or data analysis.
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Familiarity with software releases, configuration baselines, upgrade validation, rollback, and version compatibility.
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Experience with licensing, provisioning, offline or air-gapped environments, edge compute, time synchronization, networking, or telemetry analysis.
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Experience with Jira, Azure DevOps, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Zendesk, Confluence, or similar engineering and support tools.
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Military, operator, maintainer, field-service, mission-support, or customer-engineering experience.
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Active or prior security clearance.
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You can independently manage Tier 1 Hivemind support, resolve appropriate Tier 2 problems, and bring well-supported Tier 3 or depot-level cases to the appropriate engineering team.
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Customers and internal teams receive clear updates, practical next steps, and consistent follow-through.
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Your escalation packages allow engineering teams to begin useful work without repeating basic discovery.
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Common field issues have repeatable diagnostics, workarounds, and support guidance.
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Forward Deployment Engineers and core engineers spend less time reconstructing customer problems because the evidence and technical qualification are already in place.
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Incident trends are leading to improvements in Hivemind reliability, supportability, documentation, and release readiness.
Success looks like
After 90 days
After 6 months