Senior Engineer, Research-to-Product Perception (R6022)

AI Chopping Block, Inc.; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Shield AI is seeking an engineer for the Perception team to translate multimodal vision research into real-world autonomous aircraft and vehicles. You will collaborate with researchers and autonomy engineers to evaluate models, build prototypes, and advance successful ideas toward the Hivemind product, addressing sensor, compute, and edge deployment challenges.

Required are a PhD or equivalent in computer vision, ML/DL, or robotics, strong Python and PyTorch, plus production-grade C++.

Qualifications

• PhD or equivalent advanced research and hands-on engineering.
• Research depth in multimodal vision, visual foundation models, or embodied learning.
• Strong Python skills and PyTorch experience.
• Experience building substantial research software and production-quality C++.
• Collaborative approach to solving problems.

Responsibilities

• Evaluate emerging models against sensor data and autonomy needs.
• Build prototypes and experiments to reveal strengths, limitations, and deployment opportunities.
• Combine learned and classical approaches for detection, tracking, or sensor fusion.
• Optimize and integrate capabilities for edge deployment with Python/C++ software.
• Deliver tested, documented capabilities and support cross-team adoption.

Skills

Python

PyTorch

C++

Experimentation

Robotics

Education

PhD in computer vision, ML/DL, robotics or related field

Tools

ONNX

TensorRT

CUDA

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.

Job Description:

Bring promising AI research into autonomous systems that operate in the real world. Shield AI’s Perception team is looking for an engineer who enjoys exploring new ideas and making them work on real hardware. You’ll help turn advances in multimodal computer vision, visual foundation models, and embodied AI into useful capabilities for autonomous aircraft and vehicles.

Working alongside researchers and autonomy engineers, you’ll evaluate promising approaches, build prototypes, and carry successful ideas into the Hivemind product. You’ll combine learned methods with established perception techniques, working through the sensor, software, and compute challenges that make edge robotics different from a benchmark.

What you'll do:

• Evaluate emerging models and methods against representative sensor data and autonomy needs.
• Build prototypes and experiments that reveal strengths, limitations, and practical deployment opportunities.
• Combine learned and classical approaches to improve detection, tracking, geometric vision, or sensor fusion.
• Optimize and integrate capabilities for edge deployment, contributing Python and C++ software with support from experienced product engineers.
• Help deliver tested, documented capabilities and stay involved as other teams adopt them.

Required qualifications:

• A PhD in computer vision, machine learning (ML/DL), robotics, or a related field, or an equivalent record of advanced research and hands-on engineering.
• Research depth in an area such as multimodal vision, visual foundation models, video understanding, open-vocabulary perception, or embodied learning.
• Strong Python skills and experience with PyTorch or a comparable ML framework.
• A thoughtful approach to experiments, evaluation data, and understanding why models fail.
• Experience building substantial research software, an interest in developing production-quality C++, and a collaborative approach to solving problems.

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience bringing a research prototype into sustained use.
• Experience with robotics, real sensors, temporal data, or multi-sensor perception.
• Familiarity with vision-language models, vision-language-action models, or embodied AI.
• Experience with C++, edge inference, or model optimization using tools such as ONNX, TensorRT, or CUDA.

You don’t need to meet every preferred qualification or arrive as an expert C++ engineer. We welcome recent PhD graduates and early-career researchers, and we value technical depth, curiosity, and enthusiasm to transfer research to business value more than publication count alone.