Mission Systems Software Engineer - BlueSky (R5199)

F7d8749a; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Shield AI seeks a Mission Systems Software Engineer to architect and implement real-time software for autonomous aircraft. You will integrate hardware, sensors, navigation, and mission management with hardware and safety teams to deliver verifiable, high-assurance software from design reviews to field deployment.

You will define end-to-end software architecture, ensure deterministic execution, and contribute to verification across labs, simulations, and flight tests in a fast-paced defense-tech

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a technical field and 8+ years of professional software experience.
• Experience developing embedded, distributed, real-time, safety-critical software.
• Proficiency in C, C++, Rust or other systems programming languages.
• Strong understanding of real-time software principles and deterministic execution.
• Experience with embedded OS or RTOS, networking, and data distribution.
• Ability to design software architectures, APIs, interfaces, data flows, and budgets.

Responsibilities

• Serve as software mission systems engineer for a real-time mission computing system.
• Define end-to-end software architecture including apps, services, APIs.
• Architect for deterministic performance: scheduling, latency, resources.
• Develop architecture views, data flows, and deployment models.
• Integrate sensors, navigation, autonomy, C2, data processing with various teams.
• Design for resilience, security, certification, and traceability.
• Establish engineering practices for concurrency, memory management, verification.
• Lead verification strategies across labs, simulations, flight tests.

Skills

C

C++

Rust

Real-time software

Embedded systems

Distributed software

Systems programming

Hardware integration

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science / Engineering

Tools

RTOS

Middleware

Interprocess communication

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-BAT aircraft, 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 https://shield.ai/. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/shield-ai, X https://x.com/shieldaitech, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/shield_ai, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@Shield_AI.

JOB DESCRIPTION

The Mission Systems Software Engineer will work on developing solutions of a real time system environment to provide mission computing support at the center of an autonomous aircraft with sensor and weapons. This role will work to establish a software architecture for a real time system that operates in a multi-level environment at real time. The role will require work with hardware, software and systems teams to come to a consensus design. This role will focus on development of new systems and software designs from PDR, CoDR, CDR to lab test, flight test and fielding.

What you'll do:

• Serve as a software mission systems engineer for a safety- and mission-critical real-time mission-computing system aligned with A-GRA and AMS-GRA principles, profiles, interfaces, and data standards.
• Define and maintain the end-to-end software architecture, including mission applications, platform services, middleware, operating-system interfaces, hardware-abstraction layers, networking, data distribution, component boundaries, and APIs.
• Architect for deterministic real-time performance by addressing scheduling, latency, jitter, synchronization, throughput, resource utilization, distributed processing, and CPU/GPU/accelerator allocation.
• Develop architecture views, interface definitions, data-flow and deployment models, sequence and timing diagrams, resource budgets, trade studies, and technical decision records.
• Integrate sensors, effectors, communications, navigation, autonomy, mission management, command-and-control, data-processing, and vehicle services in collaboration with hardware, FPGA, cybersecurity, safety, systems, integration, and test teams.
• Design for mission resilience and assurance through fault detection and isolation, redundancy, graceful degradation, recovery, health monitoring, cybersecurity, airworthiness, certification, and requirements traceability.
• Establish engineering practices for concurrency, synchronization, memory and resource management, deterministic execution, interface control, configuration management, and predictable component integration.
• Define and execute verification strategies across HIL/SIL laboratories, simulations, test benches, flight-test environments, and deployed systems using automated, performance, stress, fault-injection, interface, and timing tests.
• Maintain technical ownership throughout the system lifecycle by evaluating enabling technologies and supplier designs, analyzing performance, managing technical debt and modernization roadmaps, promoting reuse, and communicating architectural decisions.

Required qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field.
• 8+ years of professional software-engineering experience, including 3+ years in software architecture, systems architecture, or technical leadership.
• Experience developing embedded, distributed, real-time, safety-critical, or mission-critical software systems.
• Proficiency in C, C++, Rust, or another strongly typed systems-programming language.
• Strong understanding of real-time software principles, including scheduling, concurrency, synchronization, latency, jitter, memory management, and deterministic execution.
• Experience with embedded operating systems or RTOSs, middleware, interprocess communication, networking and data-distribution technologies.
• Experience defining software architectures, APIs, interface-control documents, data flows, deployment models, and system resource budgets.
• Experience integrating software with hardware, sensors, communications systems, navigation systems, effectors, or other mission-system components.
• Experience supporting software through requirements development, design reviews, implementation, integration, verification, system test, and deployment.
• Working knowledge of systems-engineering processes, requirements management, traceability, configuration management and verification and validation.
• Ability to analyze system performance using instrumentation, telemetry, traces, profiling, network captures, timing data, and resource-utilization measurements.
• Strong cross-functional technical leadership, problem-solving, written communication, and presentation skills.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Department of Defense security clearance; U.S. citizenship may be required for clearance eligibility.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience developing software for autonomous aircraft, unmanned aircraft systems, avionics, mission computers, robotics, or aerospace and defense platforms.
• Experience with A-GRA, AMS-GRA, OMS, UCI, FACE, or other government reference architectures and open-mission-system standards.
• Experience integrating autonomy, mission management, command-and-control, sensor processing, communications, navigation, and effector capabilities.
• Familiarity with airworthiness, safety-assurance, or certification standards such as DO-178C, DO-254, ARP4754A, or applicable military airworthiness guidance.
• Experience with CPU-, GPU-, FPGA-, or accelerator-based heterogeneous computing architectures.
• Experience with publish/subscribe middleware, quality-of-service controls, high-ra