Staff Infrastructure Engineer

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. 

Job Description:

Shield AI is seeking a Staff Infrastructure Engineer to design, engineer, and support enterprise infrastructure across offices, engineering environments, data centers, and hybrid cloud platforms.

As part of the Cloud & Infrastructure team within Enterprise Operations, this role will provide senior technical leadership across Active Directory, compute, virtualization, storage, backup and disaster recovery, and core infrastructure services. The Staff Infrastructure Engineer will remain hands-on while helping define scalable, secure, and resilient infrastructure standards that support Shield AI’s continued growth.

This position is based in San Mateo, CA, or the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area, with regular on-site presence required. Occasional travel to other Shield AI offices, engineering sites, and data center locations may be required.

What you'll do:

• Systems Engineering

• Serve as a senior technical resource on the Cloud & Infrastructure team, designing and implementing solutions for complex infrastructure requirements and technical challenges.

• Design, deploy, administer, and optimize Active Directory and core identity infrastructure, including domain services, Group Policy, DNS, authentication, replication, and integration with cloud identity services.

• Engineer and operate enterprise compute, virtualization, and storage infrastructure supporting business, engineering, and mission-critical workloads.

• Design, administer, and optimize enterprise storage platforms, including capacity planning, performance, availability, data protection, replication, and lifecycle management.

• Engineer and support compute platforms across data centers, colocation facilities, offices, and hybrid cloud environments, including virtualization, GPU-accelerated infrastructure, VDI, and specialized engineering workloads.

• Engineer and maintain Windows and Linux server infrastructure across Perform capacity planning and infrastructure sizing for new workloads, engineering environments, site expansions, and data center deployments.

• Design, deploy, and maintain data center and colocation infrastructure, including server and storage platforms, rack-level deployments, capacity planning, hardware lifecycle management, resiliency, and coordination with supporting teams and external providers.

• Perform infrastructure capacity planning and sizing for new workloads, engineering environments, site expansions, and data center deployments.

Resiliency, Operations & Automation

• Design and continuously improve backup, disaster recovery, and infrastructure resiliency, including recovery architecture, replication, recovery objectives, testing, documentation, and execution of disaster recovery exercises.

• Implement monitoring and observability for infrastructure availability, capacity, performance, and reliability; identify and drive improvements before they become operational issues.

• Develop infrastructure automation and repeatable deployment patterns using Terraform, Ansible, PowerShell, Python, Bash, or similar technologies.

• Support integration between on-premises infrastructure and AWS/Azure, including workloads requiring hybrid connectivity or services, and support containerized or Kubernetes-based infrastructure where appropriate.

• Troubleshoot and resolve complex infrastructure incidents and serve as an escalation point for critical production issues.

• Participate in on-call, emergency response, and planned maintenance activities as required.

Technical Leadership & Collaboration

• Partner with Cybersecurity on infrastructure hardening, vulnerability remediation, access controls, and compliance requirements.

• Partner with Network Engineering on infrastructure connectivity and dependency requirements while maintaining clear ownership boundaries for enterprise network architecture and network devices.

• Lead infrastructure projects and technical initiatives from design through implementation, including architecture, standards, operational documentation, and handoff procedures.

• Mentor engineers and provide technical guidance while remaining hands-on with infrastructure engineering and implementation.

• Develop and maintain infrastructure standards, architecture documentation, operational procedures, and engineering best practices.

Required qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in a technical discipline or equivalent practical experience.

• 8+ years of experience engineering and supporting enterprise infrastructure in production environments.

• Advanced experience administering and engineering Microsoft Active Directory, including AD DS, Group Policy, DNS, authentication, and replication.

• Strong experience with enterprise compute, virtualization, and storage platforms, including technologies such as VMware, Hyper-V, KVM, NetApp, Pure Storage, Dell EMC, or equivalent.

• Strong Windows Server administration experience and working proficiency with Linux systems such as RHEL or Ubuntu.

• Experience designing and implementing backup, replication, disaster recovery, and business continuity solutions, including RTO/RPO planning and testing.

• Experience with infrastructure automation and configuration management using tools such as Terraform, Ansible, PowerShell, Python, Bash, or similar technologies.

• Experience supporting hybrid infrastructure across on-premises environments and AWS and/or Azure.

• Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical initiatives, establish engineering standards, troubleshoot ambiguous problems, and mentor other engineers.

• Effective written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate technical concepts to technical and non-technical audiences.

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience supporting infrastructure in high-availability, mission-critical, manufacturing, aerospace, defense, or engineering environments.

• Deep experience with one or more enterprise storage and data protection ecosystems, including NetApp, Pure Storage, Dell EMC, or equivalent technologies.

• Experience designing infrastructure across multiple offices, engineering sites, laboratories, and data center or colocation environments.

• Experience with Kubernetes or containerized workloads and the underlying compute, storage, and infrastructure requirements that support them.

• Experience supporting GPU compute, high-performance computing, or other accelerated engineering workloads.

• Experience with VDI platforms such as VMware Horizon, Citrix, Azure Virtual Desktop, or equivalent technologies.

• Strong understanding of infrastructure networking fundamentals, including TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, routing, VLANs, and firewalls.

• Experience operating in security-conscious or regulated environments and supporting infrastructure controls aligned with frameworks such as NIST or CMMC.

• Relevant technical certifications such as VMware VCP, Microsoft, NetApp, AWS, Azure, or equivalent certifications.

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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.

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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.