About Shield AI
Founded in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed defense technology company focused on protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its flagship autonomy software, Hivemind, powers aircraft, drones, and other platforms, enabling complex missions with high reliability in contested environments. With offices in San Diego, Dallas, Washington, D.C., and internationally, Shield AI’s products actively support U.S. and allied operations worldwide.
The Presales Solutions Engineer will provide technical expertise and support to customers prior to the sale of Shield AI Aircraft and other products. This role involves collaborating closely with customers to understand their requirements and demonstrating how our solutions can meet their needs. You will play a key role in ensuring successful product development throughout the presales process. The Solutions Engineer serves as a technical force multiplier for the Business Development (BD) team, providing expertise on Shield AI’s products and services to drive customer engagement, solution alignment, and successful deal capture. This role bridges the gap between our technology roadmap and our customers' operational needs.
What you'll do:
- Lead technical capture efforts for European opportunities, ensuring solutions are technically sound, feasible, and aligned with Shield AI’s product roadmap. Capture efforts will focus on Aircraft, but will require familiarity with the entire Shield AI Product suite.
- Manage multiple priorities in a dynamic, fast-paced environment, including customer engagements, pre-sales technical support, proposal contributions, and solution development.
- Develop and execute technical strategies that result in high-quality, compliant, and compelling proposals to maximize win probability.
- Serve as the primary technical lead for BD engagements in Europe, interfacing cross-functionally with BD, BD Operations , Engineering, Operations, Program Management, and Product Management to ensure customer needs are met.
- Manage technical content for proposals, requests for information (RFIs), white papers, and capability briefs, ensuring accuracy, clarity, and compliance.
- Support BD and Account Executives by becoming a Subject Matter Expert in Shield AI products, providing technical expertise in customer engagements, capability briefings, and solution discussions to drive successful sales outcomes.
- Act as a liaison between BD and Engineering, ensuring that new customer requests are technically feasible and align with product capabilities, timelines, and roadmaps.
- Contribute to the technical documentation repository, maintaining capability briefs, specifications, FAQs, and other sales collateral for internal and external use.
- Provide training and mentorship to BD teams on technical aspects of Shield AI’s solutions, enabling them to articulate our value proposition confidently.
- Support competitive analysis and market intelligence, ensuring the BD team remains informed on industry trends and competitor capabilities.
- Contribute to process improvement efforts, leveraging lessons learned from customer engagements to refine BD workflows and technical capture strategies.
Required qualifications:
- 5+ years of experience in technical presales, business development, or solutions engineering, preferably in defense, aerospace, AI-driven technology, or U.S. Federal/International government environments.
- Bachelor’s degree in engineering or related field.
- Experience working with U.S. Federal or International government requirements.
- Strong technical acumen in Aircraft, UAS, multispectral sensor systems, AI, autonomy, and defense technology (experience with V-BAT, Hivemind, and Vision Systems preferred).
- Outstanding analytical and quantitative problem-solving skills, with a demonstrated aptitude for technical assessments and solution development.
- Strong technical writing ability to author requests for information, abstracts, and quad charts.
- Proven leadership experience in a work setting and/or through extracurricular activities.
- Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear, compelling messaging for both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Ability to work collaboratively in a cross-functional team environment and effectively engage with stakeholders at all levels of an organization.
- Track record of high performance, including a demonstrated work ethic, reliability as a teammate, kindness, and commitment to high standards.
- Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, nontraditional defense contractor environment.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience managing Foreign Military Sale and Direct Commercial Sale proposals.
- Strong technical background especially with Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs).
- Demonstrated thorough understanding and knowledge of the military operations and the acquisition process.
- 3+ years of experience in an presales/solutions engineering role
- 3+ years of experience working in a startup environment.
- Demonstrated understanding of specific DoD operational scenarios and systems.
- Active DoD security clearance.
Our international team members are employed through our PEO partner and receive a comprehensive international benefits package on top of base salary. For full details on compensation and benefits, please consult your talent acquisition partner.
