# Staff Reliability and Maintainability Engineer

**Company:** [Shield AI](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/shield-ai)
**Location:** Dallas, TX
**Role:** Other
**Salary:** $100k – $150k/yr
**Experience:** 7+ years
**Skills:** Root Cause Analysis, Fracas, Fmea, Fmeca, Rcca, Fault Tree Analysis, Weibull Analysis, Reliability Engineering, Maintainability Analysis, Failure Analysis, Aerospace Systems, Unmanned Aircraft Systems
**Posted:** 2026-07-09

> Senior individual contributor leading root cause analysis, corrective actions, and reliability improvements for fielded V-BAT unmanned aircraft system failures. Requires 5+ years in reliability/maintainability engineering or related hardware sustainment fields, strong failure analysis skills, and cross-functional collaboration in aerospace/defense.

## Job Description

## What you'll do

- Lead engineering investigations for V-BAT field failures, repeat defects, reliability issues, maintainability issues, and complex technical escalations.
- Drive Root Cause and Corrective Action investigations for fielded V-BAT issues, including containment, root cause identification, corrective action planning, verification, and closure.
- Reproduce and analyze field issues using logs, returned hardware, test data, maintenance records, operational context, configuration data, environmental conditions, and customer-reported symptoms.
- Partner with Fleet Support Engineers, Product Engineering, Quality, Manufacturing, Reliability Data Engineering, Supply Chain, and Operations to investigate and resolve fielded system issues.
- Determine whether issues are caused by design, manufacturing, supplier quality, configuration, software, operator use, environmental exposure, maintenance practices, documentation gaps, or system integration effects.
- Lead or support returned material analysis, teardown reviews, bench testing, inspection planning, fault isolation, and failure replication activities.
- Document failure modes, root cause, contributing factors, containment actions, corrective actions, verification plans, and recurrence-prevention measures.
- Drive corrective actions through closure by ensuring actions have owners, due dates, verification methods, and measurable field-improvement outcomes.
- Identify reliability and maintainability trends from field failures, repeat defects, maintenance data, test results, and product health indicators.
- Recommend new tests, inspections, diagnostics, design changes, process changes, maintenance updates, or supplier quality actions to prevent recurrence.
- Provide technical input to product health reviews, reliability readouts, sustainment reviews, fleet readiness assessments, and leadership updates.
- Support development and improvement of R&M processes, including field failure review, FRACAS, RCCA, reliability growth tracking, maintainability feedback loops, and corrective action management.
- Work with Product Engineering to ensure field-failure findings are translated into design improvements, retrofit plans, software updates, service actions, or configuration changes where appropriate.
- Work with Quality and Manufacturing to determine whether failures are linked to process escapes, inspection gaps, workmanship issues, supplier defects, or production variation.
- Work with Fleet Support and Operations to understand operational impact, maintenance burden, customer effects, and urgency of fielded system issues.
- Provide clear technical recommendations on containment, inspection, repair, replacement, retrofit, service guidance, or fleet-level mitigation.
- Communicate investigation findings, risks, corrective actions, and verification status clearly to technical teams, sustainment leadership, and cross-functional stakeholders.
- Support X-BAT lessons learned where V-BAT reliability, maintainability, and field-failure experience can inform future design, sustainment, diagnostics, repairability, and lifecycle planning.

## Required qualifications

- Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, Reliability Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
- 5+ years of experience in reliability engineering, maintainability engineering, failure analysis, systems engineering, quality engineering, aviation sustainment, product support, manufacturing engineering, or complex hardware sustainment.
- Demonstrated experience leading technical investigations for field failures, repeat defects, hardware issues, system-level issues, or complex product performance problems.
- Experience driving Root Cause and Corrective Action investigations from initial problem statement through containment, root cause, corrective action, verification, and closure.
- Strong ability to analyze hardware, software behavior, logs, test data, returned material, field reports, configuration history, maintenance records, and operational context.
- Familiarity with structured problem-solving and failure-analysis methods such as 5 Whys, fault tree analysis, fishbone diagrams, 8D, FMEA/FMECA, FRACAS, fault isolation, or similar methods.
- Ability to distinguish between design, manufacturing, supplier quality, configuration, software, operator, environmental, maintenance, and documentation-related contributors.
- Experience working across Product Engineering, Fleet Support, Quality, Manufacturing, Reliability Data Engineering, Supply Chain, and Operations to resolve technical issues.
- Strong technical judgment and problem-solving skills, including the ability to investigate ambiguous field reports, identify likely failure modes, and define practical next steps.
- Ability to convert technical findings into clear corrective actions, verification plans, risk assessments, and product or process improvement recommendations.
- Experience supporting customer-impacting technical issues in aviation, unmanned systems, robotics, defense, manufacturing, aerospace, or complex electromechanical systems.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to document technical findings, investigation rationale, corrective actions, and leadership-level summaries.
- Ability to operate independently as a senior technical IC and drive cross-functional accountability without direct authority.
- Ability to balance engineering rigor, investigation depth, field urgency, customer impact, and fleet-readiness needs.

## Preferred qualifications

- Experience with unmanned aircraft systems, aviation sustainment, aerospace manufacturing, defense products, robotics, or deployed hardware systems.
- Experience with FRACAS, reliability growth programs, fleet reliability tracking, MTBF/MTBUR analysis, Weibull analysis, reliability block diagrams, maintainability analysis, or product health dashboards.
- Experience analyzing aircraft logs, flight data, maintenance data, telemetry, software logs, test results, inspection findings, or returned hardware.
- Familiarity with RCCA, MRB, ECO/ECR processes, configuration management, service bulletins, maintenance releases, retrofit planning, or field service actions.
- Experience investigating failures in avionics, propulsion, power systems, flight controls, structures, payload interfaces, ground equipment, support equipment, or complex electromechanical assemblies.
- Experience working with Reliability Data Engineering, data analytics, or fleet health monitoring teams to identify failure trends and emerging risks.
- Experience supporting fielded products where technical recommendations directly affect readiness, safety, maintainability, or customer operations.
- Experience working in a startup, high-growth, defense environment.

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