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Shield AI is seeking a Senior Principal Engineer to establish and lead the technical vision for Guidance, Navigation & Control (GNC) and State Estimation capabilities within Hivemind, the company's autonomy software platform. This is a hands-on technical leadership role combining strategic architecture ownership with direct algorithm development.
You will own GNC and State Estimation technical strategy, roadmap, and development priorities, aligning investments with product management, customer requirements, and partner organization roadmaps. You'll build the team from the ground up—defining required capabilities and technical roles, recruiting and assessing engineers, and establishing onboarding, mentorship, and engineering standards.
Key responsibilities include designing and implementing guidance, navigation, flight-control, and state-estimation algorithms; delivering production autopilot and flight-control software from requirements through embedded implementation, integration, verification, and customer deployment; and building a reusable GNC platform with modular algorithms, vehicle/sensor abstractions, and validation tools that support multiple aircraft and customer integrations.
You will accelerate the simulation-to-flight development cycle by establishing high-fidelity vehicle and sensor models, automated software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop testing, and Monte Carlo analysis. You'll guide customers through technical airworthiness work, helping them establish platform-specific requirements, verification plans, and supporting evidence. You'll also drive GNC contributions to Runtime Assurance (RTA) capabilities and build trusted technical partnerships across Shield AI's engineering organization.
Shield AI's products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation technologies, actively supporting operations worldwide across offices in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.
REQUIREMENTS:
- At least 15 years of professional experience in GNC with substantial hands-on development of aircraft flight controls, autopilot capabilities, navigation, and state estimation
- Expert knowledge of aircraft dynamics, stability and control, guidance, and estimation, with demonstrated ability to apply to practical flight systems
- Deep experience with state estimation and sensor fusion, including inertial navigation, Kalman or nonlinear filtering, sensor characterization, and evaluation of estimation accuracy, consistency, and robustness
- Demonstrated record of shipping and supporting production autopilot, flight-control, or integrated GNC software, including direct involvement in flight testing and deployment to operational aircraft or customer platforms
- Significant experience as a technical lead, Principal Engineer, chief engineer, or equivalent, with ownership of complex technical decisions and influence across multiple engineering teams
- Demonstrated ability to recruit, mentor, and develop strong technical talent, including experience establishing a new engineering capability or building and growing a specialist team
- Strong current proficiency in C++ for production, real-time software, together with MATLAB/Simulink or equivalent modeling tools and Python or comparable analysis and automation tools
- Extensive experience designing, tuning, and validating GNC systems through high-fidelity simulation, software-in-the-loop testing, hardware-in-the-loop testing, and flight-test analysis
- Experience with safety-critical development and verification, including requirements traceability, technical reviews, configuration management, and generation of evidence supporting qualification or airworthiness
- Experience designing reusable algorithms, libraries, interfaces, or development tools that serve multiple platforms, programs, or engineering teams
- Ability to work effectively in a modern development environment using version control, code review, continuous integration, automated testing, and reproducible simulation and analysis workflows
- Strong communication and collaboration skills, with a record of establishing technical roadmaps, delivering against commitments, incorporating customer feedback, and earning the trust of senior technical peers
- Master's degree in aerospace engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, Applied Mathematics, or Computer Science
PREFERRED:
- Experience with GCAS/ACAS, detect-and-avoid, flight-envelope protection, or related flight-safety capabilities
- Direct experience developing or validating Runtime Assurance architectures, safety monitors, recovery controllers, or assured-autonomy capabilities
- Experience guiding customers or aircraft programs through military or civil airworthiness processes
- Familiarity with DO-178C or comparable development-assurance processes and RTA guidance
- Experience deploying navigation and estimation capabilities in GNSS-degraded or denied environments, including integration of APNT sources
- Experience across multiple aircraft configurations (fixed-wing, VTOL, rotorcraft) and adapting shared GNC capabilities to different flight envelopes
- Advanced expertise in robust or nonlinear control, model predictive control, trajectory optimization, system identification, or advanced estimation
- Master's degree or PhD with emphasis on controls, navigation, estimation, robotics, or autonomous systems
