Senior Software Engineer, Autonomous Pilot Integration – Expeditionary (R5208)

Shield AI; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Shield AI in the United States is seeking a senior software engineer to join the Autonomous Pilot Integration team. You will develop autonomy capabilities for V-BAT and X-BAT platforms, and own major features from simulation to live flight tests in expeditionary environments.

You will collaborate with Aircraft, Autonomy Capabilities, Perception, and customer stakeholders to deliver mission-ready autonomy software and mentor teammates, guiding integration and field deployment across multiple

Job description

Founded in 2015, 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 and V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft. 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 Autonomous Pilot Integration team for expeditionary platforms builds autonomy solutions for V-BAT — an unmannedaircraftoperatingin expeditionary environments for ISR, target acquisition, communications, and multi-agent missions. The team also builds autonomy for X-BAT, a new platform under development by the aircraft team; for X-BAT, the team builds on top of the existing mission autonomy solution from the Strategic Systems (ACP) portfolio and works closely with the aircraft team on the flight-autonomy interface. We combine capabilities from the Autonomy Capabilities team (motion planning, tactics), the Perception team (e.g.,ViDAR, ATR), and theHivemindSDKto develop the autonomy software that runs on these platforms, then integrate, validate, and field it on the real hardware — for U.S. and international defense customers.

In this role, you\'ll develop new autonomy capabilities — including mission behaviors, platform-specific control (including VTOL transitions), multi-agent coordination, contingencies, and executive autonomy — and own major features from software-in-the-loop, to hardware-in-the-loop, to vehicle-in-the-loop, to live flight test.You\'llpartner closely with the Aircraft team, Autonomy Capabilities, Perception, GCS, feature crews, and customer stakeholders to deliver mission-ready autonomy software and solve complex integration challenges. As a senior engineer,you\'llprovide technical leadership across major capabilities, mentor teammates, influencearchitectureand integration strategy, and help drive successful field deployments for both mature and emerging expeditionary platforms.

This team has a strong fielded-operator culture — long-endurance ISR missions, customer-driven workflow iteration, and demanding live exercises across multiple U.S. and international services.It'sa hands-on role for engineers who want to see their softwareoperateon realaircraftand directly support operators in the field.