Senior Staff Engineer, Customer Support (R5502)

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 Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube.

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 seeking a technical Customer Support Engineer to serve as the front door for Hivemind software support. This role is part customer service representative, part fleet-support engineer: you will intake customer issues, collect the right evidence, triage software and integration problems, route issues to the right owners, and help customers get back to mission-ready operation.

This is a customer-facing technical support role that requires technical depth to understand logs, configuration, versions, APIs, autonomy workflows, software deployment, operator context, and basic code behavior, paired with the discipline to communicate clearly, manage expectations, document outcomes, and keep support work moving through the correct process.

You will partner closely with Forward Deployment Engineers, Product Support Engineering, Sustainment Engineering, Product, Program, Licensing, and core Hivemind engineering teams to turn field-reported issues into actionable tickets, reproducible findings, workarounds, knowledge-base articles, and product-supportability improvements.

What you'll do:

• Serve as the first technical support point of contact for Hivemind software customers, partners, operators, maintainers, and internal field teams.
• Own support intake quality: issue description, mission impact, severity, customer environment, software version, configuration, asset context, logs, screenshots, telemetry, and reproduction steps where available.
• Triage Hivemind Enterprise software, API, licensing/provisioning, deployment, configuration, operator-workflow, and integration issues across fielded systems.
• Distinguish Hivemindsoftware issues from customer configuration, unsupported environment, partner/OEM integration, network, hardware-adjacent, training, or feature-request issues.
• Route issues to the right owner across support operations, Field Deployment Engineering, Product Support Engineering, Sustainment Engineering, Licensing, Product, Program, and core engineering.
• Provide customer-safe updates that explain status, next steps, workarounds, expected evidence, and escalation path .
• Help reproduce or validate issues in lab, simulation, software test, or representative environments when appropriate.
• Analyze logs, telemetry, version state, configuration, release notes, and known issues to support triage and root-cause investigation.
• Convert recurring support cases into knowledge-base articles, troubleshooting guides, known-issue records, intake improvements, diagnostic checklists, and product feedback.
• Support release readiness, update troubleshooting, license/provisioning workflows, customer onboarding, and deployment-to-sustainment handoffs.
• Track support metrics and patterns that help the Sustainment team understand customer pain points, common failure modes, response quality, and supportability gaps.

Projects you may work on:

• Building the Hivemind support intake form and minimum evidence checklist for customer software issues.
• Creating a triage playbook for Hivemind Enterprise/API, license/provisioning, software deployment, configuration, and operator-workflow problems.
• Turning repeated field questions into customer-facing knowledge-base articles and internal escalation runbooks.
• Working with an FDE to convert a deployment issue into a complete support case with logs, versions, impact, workaround, owner, and closure criteria.
• Helping Product Support Engineering identify the top recurring supportability gaps in Hivemind software releases.
• Supporting a customer update or release rollout by tracking incoming issues, workarounds, known issues, and customer-safe status.

Required qualifications:

• 7+ years of experience in technical customer support, fleet support, field support, software support, systems integration, applications engineering, technical operations, or a similar customer-facing technical role.
• Strong troubleshooting mindset and ability to turn ambiguous customer reports into structured, actionable support cases.
• Working knowledge of Linux systems, logs, configuration files, networking basics, software versions, and diagnostic workflows.
• Ability to read and reason about C++ code.
• Ability to understand software behavior across customer workflows, APIs, deployment state, configuration, and integration context.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills in customer-facing and cross-functional environments, including calm communication during high-pressure support situations.
• Ability to manage ticket hygiene, severity, ownership, customer updates, evidence requests, escalation paths, and support boundaries with discipline.
• Ability to write concise support notes, troubleshooting guides, known-issue summaries, and customer-safe status updates.
• Comfort operating within export-control, security, sensitive-data, customer-site, safety, commercial, and support-boundary requirements.
• Ability to possess a Secret DoD security clearance as required by customers.

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience supporting autonomy software, robotics, unmanned systems, aviation, defense software, mission software, ground control software, SDKs, APIs, or edge-deployed systems.
• Experience supporting deployed software, fleet operations, operational readiness events, test campaigns, or customer-site deployments.
• Familiarity with Python, Bash, SQL, log parsing, telemetry review, or lightweight diagnostic scripting.
• Experience with Jira, Azure DevOps, ServiceNow, Salesforce, Zendesk, Confluence, or similar support and knowledge-management systems.
• Experience with licensing, provisioning, release management, configuration baselines, offline/air-gapped environments, or customer update workflows.
• Experience using GenAI tools to accelerate troubleshooting, support summarization, documentation, knowledge capture, or support workflow automation.
• Active or prior security clearance.

$180,000 - $269,991 a year

Full-time regular employee offer package:

Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity

Temporary employee offer package:

Pay within range listed above + temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)

Salary compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, licenses and certifications, and specific work location. All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check. Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits. Please speak to your talent acquisition representative for more information.

Shield AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed toequal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.