Principal Engineer, Material Review Board (R5309)

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.

What you'll do:: Establish and mature the Material Review Board process for post-production hardware, fielded assemblies, depot repairs, and sustainment-related nonconformances. Lead technical dispositions for nonconforming material, damaged hardware, returned components, field returns, production escapes, and repairable assemblies. Develop standard repair procedures, repair limits, inspection criteria, and disposition guidance for recurring hardware issues. Support returned material analysis, production quality deficiency reports, production escape investigations, and field hardware issue reviews. Partner with responsible engineers, design engineering, manufacturing engineering, quality, fleet support, supply chain, and chief engineers to ensure dispositions are technically sound and executable. Ensure MRB dispositions are documented, traceable, configuration-controlled, and aligned with engineering, quality, and sustainment requirements. Identify trends in nonconformances, supplier issues, manufacturing defects, field damage, repair escapes, and recurring hardware failures. Work with Failure Analysis, Reliability and Maintainability Engineering, and Root Cause and Corrective Action teams to resolve recurring hardware issues. Partner with Manufacturing Engineering and Quality to improve inspection methods, acceptance criteria, repair execution, test processes, and production controls. Support supplier quality investigations when supplier parts, materials, or assemblies impact aircraft sustainment or fleet readiness. Provide technical input to corrective actions, product health reviews, repair governance reviews, and sustainment leadership updates. Help ensure hardware issues are resolved in a way that protects safety, quality, reliability, configuration discipline, customer support, and fleet readiness. Mentor engineers and cross-functional partners on MRB discipline, disposition quality, repair documentation, and sustainment repair governance. Required qualificati