Manager, Environmental Control Systems & Thermal Engineering (R6306)

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 LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube. 

As Manager, Environmental Control Systems & Thermal, you will directly lead and develop a team of individual contributors responsible for environmental control systems, aircraft thermal management, and associated fluid and heat-transfer hardware on the X-BAT program, while supporting the advancement of these capabilities across Group 5 programs. You will be accountable for team execution and people development while maintaining enough technical depth to guide architecture, requirements, design, integration, test, supplier execution, and flight readiness. This position requires a balance of direct people leadership, technical judgment, and hands-on engagement when needed in a fast-moving aircraft development environment. The ideal candidate is an experienced engineering manager who can set clear priorities, grow strong engineers, create a high technical bar, and help the team deliver meaningful capability to operators quickly.

People Leadership and Development: Manage, mentor, and develop individual contributors; set goals, give feedback, support growth, and build a high-trust, high-standard team.

Team Planning and Execution: Set priorities, ownership, staffing, and execution cadence for X-BAT and Group 5 work; remove blockers and manage dependencies.

Technical Direction and Review: Guide ECS and thermal architecture, trades, and design reviews across thermal environments, cooling, airflow, ducting, heat exchangers, fluid circuits, and related hardware.

Requirements, Risk, and Maturity: Set expectations for requirements, reviews, verification, risk management, configuration control, and design release through flight-ready hardware.

Vehicle Integration and Interfaces: Resolve interfaces with structures, propulsion, avionics, EWIS, payloads, manufacturing, systems engineering, and test teams.

Test and Flight Readiness: Lead component, qualification, ground, and flight test planning; ensure data, anomaly resolution, and corrective actions support hardware delivery.

Hardware and Suppliers: Set expectations for components, specifications, SOWs, supplier reviews, prototype builds, and acceptance activities.

Hands-On Technical Leadership: Engage in first-principles analysis and root-cause investigations, coach engineers, and unblock complex technical problems.

Communication and Accountability: Represent the team in program and engineering reviews; communicate decisions, risks, progress, resources, and dependencies.

Clearance required: US Citizens Only & Must have an Active Secret or higher clearance.

Experience: 8+ years in aerospace environmental control systems, thermal engineering, fluid systems, or comparable aircraft mechanical systems development.

People Leadership: Experience directly managing and developing individual contributors, including setting expectations, giving feedback, and supporting career growth.

Education: B.S. or M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related technical discipline.

Core Fundamentals: Deep understanding of thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluid dynamics, and aircraft thermal management.

System Development Leadership: Ability to guide architecture, requirements, analysis, design, integration, and verification through hardware delivery.

Technical Judgment and Communication: Sound engineering judgment, early risk identification, and clear communication across technical and program teams.

Team Culture: Record of working hard, building trust, maintaining high standards, and treating others with kindness.

Experience managing engineers on UAV, autonomous aircraft, fighter, tactical aircraft, or other high-performance aerospace programs.

Experience with Group 5 aircraft, aircraft-level thermal management, ECS, or integrated fluid and thermal systems.

Hands-on experience with thermal and fluid testing, instrumentation, data acquisition, model correlation, or flight-test troubleshooting.

Experience with first-principles analysis, fluid-thermal network modeling, CFD, or thermal-analysis tools such as FloEFD, STAR-CCM+, Thermal Desktop, Amesim, or Flowmaster.

Familiarity with aerospace environmental, qualification, and airworthiness practices, including MIL-STD-810, MIL-HDBK-516, RTCA DO-160, and SAE AIR or ARP standards.

Experience with aerospace suppliers, COTS or custom components, technical specifications, SOWs, and prototype or vehicle-level test setups.

Experience hiring, onboarding, and scaling a small engineering team in a rapid R&D or production environment.

Advanced degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related discipline.