Role details
Job description
Job Description:
What you'll do
- Actuated System Layouts: Develop and mature system layouts and installation concepts for actuators, mechanisms, linkages, brackets, mounting provisions, and associated hardware within vehicle packaging constraints.
- Mechanical Design Ownership: Own detailed CAD design of actuated systems hardware from concept through drawing release, including load paths, materials, interfaces, GD&T, and tolerance stack-ups.
- Actuator and Mechanism Integration: Perform actuator sizing, kinematic layout, and installation analysis for flight control surfaces, bay doors, and other airframe mechanisms.
- Installation Analysis: Perform hand calculations and basic FEA to substantiate brackets, mounts, linkages, and mechanical installation hardware.
- Vehicle Interfaces: Define and resolve installation interfaces with structures, EWIS, EPS, thermal management, and adjacent systems, including routing, clearances, and maintainability provisions.
- Design Documentation: Develop and maintain CAD models, drawings, interface definitions, and design data packages to program standards for SRR, PDR, and CDR.
- Hardware and Supplier Execution: Support component selection, technical specifications, supplier technical execution, prototype assembly, and mechanical test-fixture development.
- Qualification and Hardware Delivery: Define and execute qualification test plans per MIL-STD-810, using results to mature the design into production-ready hardware and support MIL-HDBK-516 Airworthiness Certification.
Required qualifications
- Experience: 5 to 12 years of mechanical systems design experience in aerospace or a comparable regulated industry, with hands-on experience designing actuated mechanisms or aircraft installations.
- Education: B.S. or M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
- Core Fundamentals: Deep mastery of mechanical design, kinematics, load paths, materials selection, GD&T, and tolerance stack-up methodologies.
- Analysis and Modeling: Demonstrated capability performing closed-form hand calculations and basic FEA for mechanisms, brackets, mounts, and structural installation components.
- CAD and PLM: Extensive experience in 3D CAD modeling, mechanical layouts, and drawing release, with Siemens NX, CATIA, Creo, or equivalent PLM workflows.
- Actuated Systems Integration: Demonstrated ability to develop actuator and mechanism installations that satisfy packaging, load, clearance, maintainability, and vehicle-interface requirements.
- Hardware and Supplier Execution: Proven track record sourcing COTS/custom aerospace components, driving suppliers to schedule, and assembling benchtop or vehicle-level test setups.
- Autonomy: Demonstrated ability to self-direct, prioritize technical tasks without oversight, and deliver functional hardware under tight timelines.
- Clearance eligible
Preferred qualifications
- Aircraft flight control actuation, weapons bay door, landing gear, or other deployable-mechanism design experience.
- Experience with electro-mechanical or electro-hydrostatic actuation systems.
- Familiarity with MIL-HDBK-516, MIL-STD-810, and airworthiness verification planning for mechanical systems.
- Hands-on machine shop, fabrication, mechanical assembly, or prototype-build experience in a rapid R&D environment.
#LD
Role context
This Staff Engineer, Actuated Systems - Ranger (R6347) role at Shield AI sits in the engineering track within defense and autonomy. The position is tied to Seattle, Washington, United States and is posted within the last 17 days, which signals active hiring intent rather than archived demand. Compensation is not disclosed in the source listing, so candidates should verify range details directly with the employer. Combined with the live company and role links on this page, this listing gives candidates a direct path to compare equivalent openings by employer, market, and role focus.
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Location
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Seattle, Washington, United States
Location
Seattle, Washington, United States
Approximate role location based on the employer listing.
Seattle, Washington, United States
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