Senior AI Engineer, Vision & Perception for Autonomous Systems

Shield AI; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 163,200 - 244,800; Full time

Job summary

Shield AI in Boston seeks a senior ML engineer to develop and deploy perception models for autonomous systems. You will own features from development through production, working with ML researchers, perception engineers, autonomy engineers, and platform teams.

You will apply vision, vision-language, and 3D vision techniques, build scalable data pipelines, and optimize models for embedded hardware using PyTorch, TensorRT, ONNX. A SECRET clearance is required.

Qualifications

• Typically requires a minimum of 5 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 4 years and a Master’s degree; or 2 years with a PhD; or equivalent work experience.
• Proficiency in ML fundamentals and deployment of CV models in production.
• Strong understanding of 3D vision problems/algorithms.
• Experience with PyTorch and TensorFlow; deploying with TensorRT and ONNX.
• Proficiency in C++ and Python; ability to translate research into practical applications.
• Ability to obtain a SECRET clearance.

Responsibilities

• Model Development – Design, train, fine-tune, and maintain state-of-the-art vision, vision-language, and vision-language-action models that improve perception and decision-making for autonomous systems.
• Data Pipelines & Model Training – Build scalable data pipelines, supervised fine-tuning (SFT) workflows, and evaluation loops that continuously improve model performance on mission-relevant tasks.
• Model Deployment & Optimization – Deploy and optimize machine learning models for embedded hardware using technologies such as ONNX, TensorRT, and hardware-accelerated inference frameworks.
• Perception & Autonomy Applications – Apply modern machine learning techniques to solve challenging perception and autonomy problems across aerial and other autonomous systems.
• Research-to-Production – Translate cutting-edge machine learning research into production-ready capabilities by balancing model performance, robustness, computational efficiency, and operational reliability.
• Cross-functional Collaboration – Partner closely with perception, autonomy, platform, and software engineering teams to integrate machine learning capabilities into mission-ready autonomous systems.
• Model Evaluation & Validation – Develop benchmarks, testing methodologies, and evaluation frameworks to measure model performance, identify failure modes, and guide future improvements.
• Continuous Improvement – Improve training infrastructure, developer tooling, deployment workflows, and model lifecycle management to accelerate experimentation and production delivery.

Skills

Machine learning fundamentals

3D vision understanding

Analytical problem solving

Python

Education

Bachelor's degree or higher

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

TensorRT

ONNX

C++

Python

Job description

Shield AI in Boston seeks a senior ML engineer to develop and deploy perception models for autonomous systems. You will own features from development through production, working with ML researchers, perception engineers, autonomy engineers, and platform teams.

You will apply vision, vision-language, and 3D vision techniques, build scalable data pipelines, and optimize models for embedded hardware using PyTorch, TensorRT, ONNX. A SECRET clearance is required.