Manager of Engineering, Autonomy Capabilities (R5412)

Shield AI; Washington; On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. The Autonomy Capabilities team develops the core functionality used to drive autonomous decision making for single- and multi-agent platforms across air, land, and sea domains.

Our work spans motion planning, tactical behaviors, track fusion, and perception-aware decision-making. You will own the team's technical delivery, organizational health, and growth.

Responsibilities

• Own the team's technical delivery and architectural direction.
• Hire and mentor engineers to solve complex autonomy challenges.
• Guide design decisions from rapid prototyping to software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, and live test exercises.

Job description

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BATaircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, Shield AI's technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube.

The Autonomy Capabilities team develops the core functionality used todrive autonomous decision making forsingle- and multi-agent teams of platforms in pursuit of mission objectives. The team servesas a central technical discipline within Shield AI, driving consistent approaches across business portfolios while operating at every level ofthe command-and-control hierarchy, from advanced control laws and motion planning to tactical behaviors and multi-agent coordination. Our work spans a wide range of mission sets, platform types, and operational domains, including air, sea, and space.

The team combines strong technical fundamentals, including vehicle kinematics and dynamics, trajectory design, optimization, information fusion, and efficient algorithms, with the software engineering and integration rigorrequiredto field these capabilities on real-world systems. We build autonomy thatoperatesreliably within complex integration environments and delivers differentiated mission capabilities to U.S. and international defense customers.

Your team will build autonomy solutions for small, often air- or ground-launched platforms thatoperateindividually or as part of collaborative multi-agent fleets,frequentlyin disconnected or air-gapped environments. The capabilities your team develops will span motion planning, tactical behaviors, track fusion, weapons-target assignment, and perception-aware decision-making.

You will own the team's technical delivery, organizational health, and growth. A core part of the role is building and developing the team by hiring strong engineers, mentoring them through complex technical challenges, and creating opportunities for continued growth. You will remain technically engaged, helping define system architecture, guiding key design decisions, contributing directly where it best serves the team, and ensuring solutions are delivered from rapid prototyping through software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, and live test exercises. Success in this role requires a leader who can balance technical depth with people leadership, navigate ambiguity across multiple programs, and translate evolving customer needs into autonomy capabilities that can be integrated,validated, and fielded.