# Staff Field Services Engineer, Structures

**Company:** [Shield AI](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/shield-ai)
**Location:** Dallas, TX
**Role:** Hardware Engineering
**Salary:** $100k – $150k/yr
**Experience:** 5+ years
**Skills:** Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Structural Engineering, Composite Structures, Metallic Structures, Fatigue Analysis, Damage Tolerance, Mrb, CAD, Finite Element Analysis, Plm, Root Cause Analysis
**Posted:** 2026-06-24

> Senior individual contributor providing technical ownership of V-BAT airframe, structural, and mechanical sustainment issues. Evaluates damage and develops repair guidance while partnering with engineering, quality, and operations teams.

## Job Description

## What you'll do

- Own technical evaluation of V-BAT airframe, structural, mechanical, and repair-related sustainment issues across the fielded fleet.
- Assess field-reported structural damage, wear, cracking, deformation, corrosion, impact damage, fatigue concerns, hard landing effects, handling damage, and operational wear.
- Evaluate structural findings from field returns, depot inspections, mishaps, maintenance events, manufacturing escapes, and recurring fleet issues.
- Provide engineering recommendations for repair, rework, use-as-is, replacement, inspection, retrofit, or escalation based on technical risk and fleet impact.
- Support Material Review Board activity by providing structural engineering input for nonconforming airframe, mechanical, composite, metallic, bonded, or fastened assemblies.
- Develop, review, or approve structural repair instructions, inspection criteria, service guidance, and field or depot repair procedures.
- Partner with Fleet Support, Quality, Manufacturing Engineering, Product Engineering, Sustainment Engineering, and Operations to resolve structural issues impacting readiness or customer support.
- Support root cause investigations for structural failures, recurring mechanical issues, fatigue-related findings, or field-reported damage trends.
- Assess whether structural issues affect aircraft safety, airworthiness, mission readiness, configuration, service life, maintainability, or customer operations.
- Provide technical input to retrofit plans, design improvements, service bulletins, maintenance releases, and fleet-wide inspection or repair campaigns.
- Ensure structural repairs, deviations, and design or configuration changes are documented and coordinated through appropriate configuration control and engineering change processes.
- Review drawings, models, specifications, inspection results, test data, repair records, and field evidence to support technical dispositions.
- Identify recurring structural or mechanical issues that require corrective action, design improvement, maintenance procedure updates, or fleet-level mitigation.
- Support development of repair limits, inspection intervals, allowable damage criteria, and practical field maintenance guidance where appropriate.
- Coordinate with manufacturing and depot teams to ensure repair methods are executable, repeatable, inspectable, and aligned with engineering intent.
- Provide timely technical guidance to support urgent field, depot, or customer-impacting sustainment issues.
- Support X-BAT lessons learned where V-BAT structural sustainment experience can inform future sustainment, design-for-maintainability, repairability, and lifecycle planning.

## Required qualifications

- Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Structural Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
- 5+ years of experience in aerospace structures, mechanical engineering, airframe sustainment, aircraft repair, structural analysis, manufacturing engineering, product engineering, or complex hardware sustainment.
- Demonstrated experience evaluating structural damage, mechanical failures, nonconformances, field issues, repair options, or fleet-impacting hardware concerns.
- Strong understanding of metallic and/or composite structures, bonded assemblies, fastened joints, airframe hardware, load paths, fatigue, damage tolerance, structural repair methods, and inspection criteria.
- Experience developing or supporting engineering dispositions, repair instructions, inspection criteria, rework plans, service guidance, or maintenance procedures.
- Ability to evaluate field damage and recommend practical, technically defensible repair or disposition paths under time-sensitive operational conditions.
- Experience working with Quality, Manufacturing Engineering, Product Engineering, Fleet Support, MRB, Configuration Management, or Operations teams to resolve technical issues.
- Familiarity with engineering drawings, specifications, bills of material, configuration control, nonconformance processes, engineering change processes, and technical documentation.
- Ability to assess structural risk in terms of safety, readiness, service life, customer impact, maintainability, and fleet-level exposure.
- Strong problem-solving skills, including the ability to investigate ambiguous field reports, determine likely failure modes, and define next steps for inspection, analysis, repair, or escalation.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to clearly document technical findings, repair rationale, risk assessments, and recommendations for technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Ability to operate independently as a senior technical IC and drive resolution of complex sustainment issues without requiring close direction.
- Ability to balance engineering rigor, configuration discipline, operational urgency, and practical field execution.

## Preferred qualifications

- Experience with unmanned aircraft systems, aviation sustainment, aerospace manufacturing, defense products, fielded aircraft, or deployed hardware systems.
- Experience with composite aircraft structures, bonded repairs, metallic airframe repairs, structural substantiation, fatigue evaluation, damage tolerance, or stress analysis.
- Familiarity with MRB, RCCA, FRACAS, ECO/ECR processes, service bulletins, maintenance releases, depot repair, field repair, or fleet retrofit execution.
- Experience supporting structural repairs, inspections, or dispositions in aviation, aerospace, rotorcraft, fixed-wing aircraft, missiles, robotics, or other high-reliability hardware environments.
- Experience with CAD, PLM, ERP, finite element analysis, hand calculations, structural test data, inspection data, or failure analysis tools.
- Experience supporting customer-facing or fielded product issues where technical recommendations directly affect readiness, safety, or return-to-service decisions.
- Experience working in a startup, high-growth, defense technology, aerospace, robotics, or advanced manufacturing environment.
- Advanced degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Structural Engineering, or a related discipline preferred but not required.

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