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Shield AI is seeking a Senior Staff Engineer for Ground Systems Software to design, develop, and integrate complex mission-critical software systems for autonomous platforms and ground control stations. This role bridges software engineering and systems engineering, requiring deep technical expertise combined with understanding of defense-grade systems engineering processes.
You will lead software architecture and development for ground control software (GCS) that enables low-latency communication with UAVs and autonomous systems. Responsibilities include designing and optimizing high-performance client and server applications for telemetry processing, mission planning, and real-time control. You'll implement responsive user interfaces using React and TypeScript for operator workflows, spatial data visualization, and sensor feed integration.
Key responsibilities span two domains: (1) Software Architecture & Development—participating in complex distributed system design, developing scalable solutions using modern languages and frameworks, creating architecture diagrams aligned with government reference architectures, and communicating technical concepts to engineering, program management, and customer stakeholders; (2) Systems Engineering Integration—collaborating with systems engineers to derive software requirements from system-level needs, ensuring traceability to stakeholder and subsystem requirements, participating in architecture trade studies, supporting system decomposition and interface definition, and contributing to design reviews (SRR, PDR, CDR, TRR).
You will work cross-functionally with autonomy, embedded systems, backend, UX, hardware, network, and test teams to deliver integrated, field-ready solutions. The role requires proficiency in strongly typed languages (C#, TypeScript, Java, C++), familiarity with SDLC methodologies, understanding of systems engineering processes and standards, experience with requirements management and traceability, and competency with version control and CI/CD tools.
Preferred experience includes aerospace, defense, robotics, or autonomous systems domains; GCS software or mission planning tools; Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE); systems engineering tools (Cameo, MagicDraw, JIRA, Confluence); cloud-native architectures and containerization; and familiarity with Autonomy Government Reference Architectures (A-GRA) and Open Mission Systems (OMS).
