Senior Manager, Quality – Development Programs (R5315)

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: The Senior Manager of Quality is responsible for establishing and leading all quality activities for a complex aerospace development program from prototype through production readiness. This role serves as the primary quality leader embedded within the program team and partners closely with Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Flight Test, and Program Management to ensure products are designed, developed, tested, and transitioned to production with quality, reliability, and mission success as foundational objectives. The Senior Manager of Quality will build and lead a multidisciplinary quality team while implementing scalable quality systems, risk management processes, problem-solving disciplines, and development quality practices appropriate for a rapidly growing aerospace and defense technology organization. This position requires balancing speed of development with disciplined engineering rigor to support aggressive program schedules while ensuring compliance with customer, regulatory, and company requirements.

What you'll do:

Development Quality Leadership

Serve as the quality leader for XBAT development.

Establish quality strategy, objectives, and metrics aligned with program milestones.

Integrate quality requirements into the product development lifecycle.

Ensure quality considerations are incorporated during system architecture, design reviews, verification, validation, and qualification activities.

Partner with Engineering leadership to identify and mitigate technical and programmatic risks.

Drive a culture of proactive quality and continuous improvement throughout the program.

Design & Configuration Quality

Ensure quality requirements are appropriately captured in product definitions, specifications, and design documentation.

Participate in design reviews, change control boards, and configuration management activities.

Ensure full configuration and traceability for all material installed into prototype aircraft.

Evaluate engineering changes for quality and production readiness impacts.

Support requirements verification and validation planning.

Drive design-for-manufacturing, design-for-quality, and design-for-reliability initiatives.

Risk Management & Reliability

Lead quality participation in program risk management activities.

Establish and maintain FRACAS processes for development and flight test phases of the program.

Facilitate root cause and corrective action investigations for design, manufacturing, supplier, and field failures.

Support reliability growth planning and execution.

Monitor defect trends, failure modes, and reliability metrics to identify systemic risks.

Verification, Validation & Test Quality

Develop quality oversight strategies for laboratory, ground, and flight test activities.

Ensure test results, anomalies, and nonconformances are appropriately documented and dispositioned.

Support qualification and certification efforts.

Establish processes for managing test escapes, failures, and corrective actions.

Nonconformance & Corrective Action Management

Lead Material Review Board activities for development hardware.

Establish scalable processes for nonconformance management.

Drive root cause analysis using structured problem-solving methodologies.

Ensure timely and effective corrective and preventive actions.

Track effectiveness of corrective actions through closure.

Production Readiness & Industrialization

Partner with Manufactur …