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Shield AI is seeking a Staff Engineer to develop tactical autonomy software for unmanned platforms operating across air, land, sea, and space domains. This is a high-impact technical leadership role focused on architecting and implementing autonomous behaviors that enable complex multi-agent coordination, target engagement, reconnaissance, and survivability in contested operational scenarios.
In this role, you will own the full software development lifecycle—from requirements capture through design, implementation, verification, and validation. You will architect behaviors as scalable software subsystems that interact with diverse components including sensor processing, state estimation, peer-to-peer communications, contingency management, actuation, and payload interfacing. You will champion a product-line mindset to enable behavior reuse across multiple projects and portfolios.
You will collaborate closely with internal product and program-specific engineering teams to rapidly deliver state-of-the-art capabilities to vehicle platforms (both internally and externally owned), with a clear evolution path for architecture and capability over time. You will also engage with external teams—vehicle integration teams, operational subject matter experts (fighter pilots, UAV operators, etc.)—to align on interfacing requirements between diverse systems.
As a subject matter expert in software engineering, you will represent software equities in a multi-stakeholder environment including engineering, business, and sales leadership. You will mentor junior team members, build team cohesion, and set technical direction across multi-disciplinary teams. Travel to co-locate with end-users and other teams is expected up to 20% of the time.
Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies.
REQUIREMENTS:
- BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, or related field
- Proficient in production-level C++ software development
- 7+ years' experience in one or more of: software sub-system scheduling and integration, behavior planning, task and resource allocation, motion planning, optimization, or flight controls
- Experience with collaborative software development tools (version control, issue tracking, code reviews, release management)
- Proven ability to lead multi-disciplinary teams, set technical direction, and manage full project lifecycles from concept to deployment
- Capacity to learn and grow individually while mentoring junior team members effectively
- Desire to work in a highly collaborative, fast-paced, mission-centric environment
- Capacity to act as technical owner for an entire software system, including stakeholder engagement, requirements definition, roadmap management, team coordination, design, implementation, sustainment, and evolution
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:
- Experience across a breadth of technology readiness levels (TRLs) and bridging concepts from research-grade to operationally ready
- Experience with mission systems integration and hands-on support for integration events and/or flight demonstrations
- Experience in collaborative mission planning, behavior planning, synchronized teaming
- Experience in automated red force vs. blue force tactics
- Motion planning across vehicle classes, kinematic constraints, and team compositions
- Weapons target assignment, sensor target pairing, sensor-centric control laws
- Collision avoidance, geofencing, and safety monitoring
- Experience in multiple operational effects (strike, air combat, surveillance, reconnaissance, etc.) and associated domains (air, space, maritime, ground, etc.)
- Experience with FOSS software for robotic systems (ROS, OMPL, optimization solvers, etc.)
- Experience with simulation tools (AFSIM, NGTS) for testing and validation
- Familiarity with navigation and communications systems
- Experience across product delivery lifecycle from emerging opportunity through system acceptance, deployment, and sustainment
- Familiarity with systems engineering methodologies
- Familiarity with high-assurance software development processes (DO-178C or equivalent MIL-STD's)
