Manager, Software Engineering (R5966)

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:

Hivemind is looking for an experienced Engineering Manager to lead our Shared Services Engineering team.

The Shared Services team is a product-oriented, full-stack engineering team that builds and operates common services, SDKs, APIs, and customer-facing applications connecting Shield's products. These capabilities reduce duplicated engineering and help create a consistent Shield experience across product types.

You will lead the team as it identifies shared needs, establishes ownership, and delivers reliable, secure, and well-supported solutions. You will treat the team's capabilities as products, maintaining a roadmap informed by external customers and internal engineering teams.

This is a technical, hands-on management role. You will guide architecture and delivery, remain engaged in complex engineering decisions, and build a team that owns its systems from design through production operation.

What you'll do:

• Build and lead the Shared Services Engineering team, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development
• Define and execute the team's roadmap, balancing customer needs, cross-product priorities, operational health, and long-term technical investment
• Partner with product and engineering teams to identify shared capabilities, establish ownership and integration boundaries, and guide initiatives including shared authentication, telemetry integrations, the Customer Support Portal, and future public telemetry APIs
• Lead the architecture, delivery, and operation of shared services, SDKs, APIs, and customer-facing systems
• Establish secure, reliable, documented, and versioned interfaces for internal engineering teams and external customers
• Communicate plans, progress, risks, and tradeoffs across engineering, product, and organizational leadership

Required qualifications:

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, including experience managing engineers responsible for production software
• Demonstrated technical judgment in the design and operation of full-stack applications, backend services, APIs, or distributed systems
• Strategic systems thinking and the ability to turn recurring needs across products into coherent, reusable capabilities
• Track record of setting technical direction, making thoughtful tradeoffs, and executing across immediate and long-term priorities
• Effective cross-functional leadership, with the ability to build alignment and trusted partnerships across engineering, product, and organizational stakeholders

Preferred qualifications:

• Track record of leading teams that build shared services and customer-facing applications from scratch and own them through production operation
• Depth in one or more relevant domains, such as identity and authentication, public APIs and SDKs, or OpenTelemetry and high-volume telemetry data
• Experience establishing a new engineering capability, consolidating fragmented ownership, or driving adoption across multiple product teams
• Experience building and operating secure, reliable software in regulated or compliance-driven environments

$170,000 - $310,000 a year

San Diego, CA pay range: $170,000 - $250,000

San Mateo, CA pay range: $200,000 - $310,000

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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 to equal 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.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.