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Shield AI is seeking a Staff Engineer for Mission Systems Software to architect and develop real-time, safety-critical mission-computing systems for autonomous aircraft. This is a technical leadership role focused on designing end-to-end software architecture for systems that integrate sensors, weapons, autonomy, navigation, and command-and-control capabilities.
You will define and maintain comprehensive software architecture spanning mission applications, platform services, middleware, OS interfaces, hardware-abstraction layers, networking, and data distribution. The role emphasizes deterministic real-time performance optimization across scheduling, latency, jitter, synchronization, and resource allocation. You'll develop architecture views, interface definitions, data-flow models, deployment diagrams, resource budgets, and technical decision records.
Key responsibilities include integrating sensors, effectors, communications, navigation, autonomy, and mission management in collaboration with hardware, FPGA, cybersecurity, safety, systems, and test teams. You'll design for mission resilience through fault detection, redundancy, graceful degradation, health monitoring, and cybersecurity. You'll establish engineering practices for concurrency, memory management, deterministic execution, and predictable component integration.
Verification and validation span HIL/SIL labs, simulations, flight-test environments, and deployed systems using automated, performance, stress, and fault-injection testing. You'll maintain technical ownership throughout the lifecycle, evaluating enabling technologies, analyzing performance, managing technical debt, and communicating architectural decisions.
Required: Bachelor's in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field; 8+ years software engineering with 3+ years in architecture or technical leadership; embedded, distributed, real-time, or safety-critical systems experience; proficiency in C, C++, Rust, or similar systems languages; deep real-time software principles knowledge; RTOS/middleware/IPC/networking experience; software architecture and API design skills; hardware-software integration experience; full SDLC support; systems-engineering process knowledge; performance analysis capability; strong cross-functional leadership and communication; ability to obtain DoD security clearance (U.S. citizenship may be required).
Preferred: autonomous aircraft, UAS, avionics, or aerospace/defense platform experience; A-GRA, AMS-GRA, FACE, or government reference architecture familiarity; autonomy, mission management, and sensor-processing integration experience; airworthiness, safety-assurance, or certification standards knowledge (DO-178C, DO-254, ARP4754A).
