Staff Systems Administrator (R5995)

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 highly autonomous Staff Systems Administrator to serve as the accountable technical owner for enterprise IT infrastructure and end-user computing within a dedicated, security-sensitive entity environment. This senior individual contributor will design, implement, operate, secure, and continuously improve on-premises systems, cloud platforms, identity services, networks, and endpoints while preserving required legal, operational, information-security, and access boundaries. The role combines deep infrastructure ownership with hands-on service delivery. The successful candidate will translate security and compliance requirements into durable technical controls, maintain audit-ready evidence, drive equipment and endpoint hardening, and deliver resilient support to engineering and business teams with minimal oversight. What you'll do: Infrastructure Ownership (On-Prem & Cloud) • Own and operate on-premises and cloud infrastructure, including physical and virtual servers, storage, backup platforms, identity services, core network services, and enterprise applications. • Administer Azure and/or AWS environments with responsibility for availability, capacity, performance, monitoring, secure configuration, backup, and disaster-recovery readiness. • Define technical roadmaps, identify operational risks, and independently drive modernization, standardization, scalability, and resilience improvements. • Maintain accurate architecture diagrams, inventories, operating procedures, recovery documentation, configuration records, and service ownership information. • Plan and execute infrastructure changes using disciplined change, testing, rollback, and post-implementation review practices. Firewalled Entity and Segmented-Environment Support • Operate technology services for a dedicated legal or operating entity with explicit separation of systems, identities, data, administration, suppliers, and access from other corporate environments where required. • Implement and maintain approved trust boundaries, network segmentation, firewall policies, secure remote access, administrative tiers, and controlled cross-entity connectivity. • Ensure data, devices, accounts, cloud resources, and third-party access remain within authorized entity, contractual, regulatory, and data-residency boundaries. • Partner with Security, Legal, Compliance, Privacy, and corporate IT teams to translate entity-specific obligations into practical controls, operating procedures, and evidence. • Document and periodically validate boundary controls, data flows, privileged access paths, exceptions, and intercompany dependencies; escalate gaps and drive remediation to closure. • Support local business continuity and operational autonomy while aligning with approved global architecture, security standards, and governance. Security, Compliance, and Systems • Establish, implement, and maintain secure configuration baselines for Windows, macOS, Linux, servers, network devices, cloud services, and endpoint-management platforms using recognized frameworks and vendor guidance. • Own patching and vulnerability-remediation workflows, including asset coverage, risk-based prioritization, remediation timelines, exception documentation, validation, and status reporting. • Administer and validate endpoint protections such as full-disk encryption, EDR/XDR, host firewall, secure boot, application controls, device compli