Staff Software Engineer, Autonomy & Motion Planning

Shield; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 3,500,000 - 6,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Shield in Bengaluru, India, is seeking a senior leader to drive autonomous software delivery for unmanned platforms. You will lead technical direction, architect complex behaviors, and act as hands-on contributor when needed, ensuring safe, scalable autonomy across products.

You will own end-to-end delivery from requirements through validation, mentor junior engineers, and collaborate with embedded teams and pilots to evolve capabilities over time.

Qualifications

• BS/MS/PhD in CS, Aerospace, Electrical, Robotics or related field.
• Proficient in production-level C++ software development.
• 7+ years in software sub-system scheduling, behavior planning, task/resource allocation, motion planning, optimization, or flight controls.
• Experience leading multi-disciplinary teams and managing full lifecycles from concept to deployment.
• Ability to collaborate across engineering, business and sales stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Develop tactical autonomy software to enable unmanned platforms to perform complex missions across air, land, sea, and space domains with minimal human supervision.
• Implement and test behaviors that enable multi-agent coordination, target engagement, reconnaissance, and survivability in contested scenarios.
• Work through the full software development lifecycle from requirements to verification and validation with collaborative workflows.
• Champion a product-line mindset in technology road-mapping and reuse of behaviors across projects.
• Architect behaviors as scalable software subsystems interfacing with sensor processing, state estimation, communications, and actuation.
• Collaborate with internal teams to rapidly deliver state-of-the-art capabilities to vehicle platforms with clear evolution paths.
• Serve as subject matter expert for software engineering, representing software equities among stakeholders including engineering, business and sales leaders.
• Travel to co-locate with end-users and/or other teams up to 20% of the time.

Skills

C++ development

Team leadership

Requirements definition

Architecture design

Mentoring

Lifecycle management

Education

BS/MS/PhD in CS/EE/Robotics/ME

Job description

This position on the Autonomy team in India will lead the delivery of autonomous behaviors into our products, acting as technical leads, senior individual contributors, and/or as team leads that are also hands-on contributors. We expect candidates to demonstrate unparalleled end-to-end outcome ownership, driving the architecting, design, delivery, support, and evolution of safe and effective mission autonomy software throughout the entire product lifecycle.

What you'll do:

• Develop tactical autonomy software to enable unmanned platforms to perform complex missions across air, land, sea, and space domains with minimal human supervision
• Implement and test behaviors that enable multi-agent coordination, target engagement, reconnaissance, and survivability in contested scenarios
• Work throughout the entire of the software development lifecycle, from requirements capture through design, implementation, verification, and validation, utilizing tools and workflows consistent with collaborative high-quality software development
• Champion a product-line mindset in technology road-mapping and to enable reuse of behaviors across multiple projects and portfolios
• Utilize your software and systems expertise to architect behaviors as scalable software subsystems, that may interact directly or indirectly with a breadth of system components (e.g., sensor processing, state estimation, peer-to-peer communications, contingency management, actuation, and payload interfacing)
• Leverage internal product and program-specific engineering teams to rapidly deliver state-of-the-art capabilities to vehicle platforms (whether internally and externally owned), with a clear path towards architecture and capability evolution over time
• Collaborate with external teams, aligning on interfacing requirements between diverse systems, often working closely with vehicle integration teams and associated operational subject matter experts (e.g., fighter pilots, UAV operators, etc.)
• Act as a subject matter expert for software engineering, representing software equities in a multi-stakeholder environment including engineering, business and sales leadership.
• Travel to co-locate with end-users and/or other teams up to 20% of the time

Required qualifications:

• BS /MS/PhD in Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field
• Proficient in production-level C++ software development
• 7+ years' experience in one or more of the following: software sub-system scheduling and integration, behavior planning, task and resource allocation, motion planning, optimization, or flight controls
• Experience with collaborative software development tools for version control, issue tracking, code reviews, and 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, building team cohesion and capacity
• Desire to work in a highly collaborative, fast paced, enthusiastic, and mission-centric environment
• Capacity to act as the technical owner for an entire software system, including stakeholder engagement, requirements definition, roadmap management, team co-ordination, design, implementation, sustainment, and evolution

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience across a breadth of technology readiness levels (TRLs) and demonstration of bridging concepts from research-grade to operationally ready
• Experience with mission systems integration, and ideally, hands-on experience supporting integration events and/or flight demonstrations
• Experience across a multitude of application areas, including but not limited to:
• Collaborative mission planning, behavior planning, synchronized teaming
• Automated red force vs blue force tactics
• Motion planning across a variety of 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 more than one operational effect (e.g., strike, air combat, surveillance,