Founded in 2015, 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 and V-
BAT and X-
BAT aircraft. 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
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Job Description:
As the Hivemind Solutions DevOps Lead, you will lead, scale, and mentor a high-impact team of DevOps and Infrastructure Engineers responsible for the software development life cycle, build pipelines, developer environment tooling, and release infrastructure across all Hivemind Solutions.
Your team is the foundation of our engineering velocity, owning the tools and pipelines that enable hundreds of autonomy, software, and systems engineers to safely and rapidly compile, test, configure, and release AI Pilot capabilities. You will drive the modernization of our build and packaging systems (Conan, Poetry, CMake, CUE, and upcoming adoption of Nix) and ensure our software delivery pipelines, Artifactory registries, developer tooling, and Gov Cloud test environments remain highly performant, scalable, and resilient.
What you'll do:
Manage and grow a team of specialized DevOps, build, and infrastructure engineers. Set clear technical goals, conduct performance reviews, provide mentorship, and foster a culture of high operational excellence.
Maintain, optimize, and standardize our C++, Python, and Node.js build ecosystems across the organization using tools like Conan, CMake, and Poetry, while leading the technical roadmap and migration strategy for emerging reproducible environment tooling such as Nix. Standardize profile environments and lockfile management workflows.
Partner closely with the Hivemind Platform (HMP) team to ensure seamless technical alignment, common build patterns, and efficient packaging/dependency update strategies between Platform products and Hivemind Solutions programs.
Own the performance, security, and scaling of repository hosting and CI/CD pipelines in GitLab. Partner on integrating GitLab with Jira and Confluence to enable automated, highly visible, and seamless developer workflows.
Govern Artifactory remote registries (including internal C++, Python, Docker, and restricted ITAR/CUI repositories) and orchestrate secure container build workflows using BuildKit/Docker with strict credential containment (secret injection, Entra ID integration).
Champion the "Developer Experience" (DevEx) by optimizing local development environments. Streamline workstation setup scripts, build out shared developer CLI utilities, and champion best practices for documentation and workspace templates in Confluence.
Support the deployment, scaling, and orchestration of the Forge simulation and test orchestrator within Gov Cloud environments. Partner with simulation and test teams to optimize test runner performance and automate simulation-artifact collection pipelines.
Collaborate cross-functionally with the Hivemind Platform (HMP) team, Autonomy, Systems Integration, Security, and IT groups to align DevOps roadmaps with broader Hivemind Solutions milestones. Maintain clear visibility into pipeline reliability, build times, queue lengths, and Gov Cloud infrastructure budgets.
Required qualifications:
Typically requires a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical discipline and 7+ years of related experience (or 5+ years with a Master’s, or equivalent practical experience), including 2+ years of direct people leadership, team lead, or engineering management experience.
Strong practical experience managing enterprise C/C++ build systems (CMake) and package management (Conan) alongside Python package management (Poetry, pip).
Proven track record building, maintaining, and scaling enterprise CI/CD systems, with deep expertise in GitLab CI/CD pipelines and runner infrastructure.
Familiarity with Nix or other reproducible development environments, package managers, and declarative build systems is highly preferred.
Direct experience with Jira, Confluence, and GitLab integrations to automate releases, track work, manage sprint cycles, and maintain engineering documentation.
Hands-on experience managing Artifactory (or Nexus), Docker registries, and multi-stage Docker builds optimized for size, speed, and security (BuildKit secrets).
Familiarity with deploying and managing test runners or applications in cloud environments (such as Azure Gov Cloud or AWS).
Familiarity with declarative configuration languages (CUE, JSON, YAML) and container orchestration tools (Docker Compose, Kubernetes, or similar).
Solid Linux (Ubuntu/RedHat) system administration skills, including debugging tools, performance tuning, and scripting (Bash, Python) to troubleshoot developer environments and pipelines.
Experience with secure software development practices, secret management, identity providers (Active Directory, Entra ID), and managing software compilation/deployment under compliance frameworks (such as NIST or ITAR/CUI-governed environments).
Ability to obtain and maintain an active U.S. SECRET security clearance (U.S. citizenship required).
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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.