Senior Software Engineer, Autonomy Integration (R6035)

AI Chopping Block, Inc.; San Diego, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Shield AI is hiring a Software Engineer, Autonomy Integration, to work within the Pilot Integration team. You will build durable integration environments, end-to-end tests, and robust software ready for hardware and flight testing.

You will collaborate across planning, controls, simulation, and vehicle interfaces to advance the autonomy stack. The role spans defining test objectives, debugging across system boundaries, and contributing to deployment on representative hardware.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, robotics, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience developing or integrating planning, controls, or autonomy software.
• Strong production software engineering skills in modern C++ and Python.
• Hands-on experience integrating software with robotic or autonomous hardware, including deployment, interfaces, telemetry, and lab or field debugging.
• Experience with software-in-the-loop or hardware-in-the-loop testing and automated system-level tests.
• Experience developing and debugging software on Linux.
• Strong systems-debugging skills across configuration, software, network, timing, and hardware boundaries.
• Ability to write maintainable tests and tools for distributed or real-time systems.
• Ability to communicate technical findings clearly and work with engineers from several disciplines.
• Willingness to travel periodically for lab, field, or flight-test events.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain stable Pilot integration environments, reference configurations, reusable test fixtures, and representative end-to-end examples.
• Partner with component teams to add capabilities to the shared integration environment and resolve gaps in workflows and test harnesses.
• Develop and maintain automated software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop tests across autonomy components.
• Integrate and debug production software across planning, controls, simulation, vehicle interfaces, and other parts of the autonomy stack.
• Investigate failures across system boundaries; reproduce, instrument, and provide evidence for required changes.

Skills

C++

Python

Linux

Testing

Debugging

Systems integration

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Robotics

Tools

MAVLink

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:

We are hiring a Software Engineer, Autonomy Integration, who will be embedded in the Planning and Controls team and work day to day with Pilot's cross‑functional Integration team. In this hands‑on software role, you will build durable integration capability: reliable environments, representative end‑to‑end tests, diagnosable failures, and software that is ready for hardware and flight testing. You will draw on your experience in planning, controls, or autonomy decision‑making and your systems integration skills to work across domain boundaries.

The Pilot Integration team provides stable reference integrations that component teams can use to add new capabilities and prove that they work as part of the larger autonomy stack. It builds and maintains the environments where Hivemind Pilot's autonomy capabilities come together. The team's work spans planning and controls, perception, simulation, vehicle interfaces, deployment, and system‑level testing.

We are hiring across multiple experience levels. Depending on experience, engineers may begin with well‑defined integrations and tests or independently own end‑to‑end workflows and ambiguous cross‑system investigations.

What you'll do:

• Build and maintain stable Pilot integration environments, reference configurations, reusable test fixtures, and representative end‑to‑end examples.
• Partner with component teams as they add capabilities to the shared integration environment, maintain the integration baseline, and help resolve gaps in shared workflows, test harnesses, or extensibility.
• Develop and maintain automated software-in‑the‑loop and hardware-in-the-loop tests that exercise behavior across autonomy components.
• Integrate and debug production software across planning and controls, simulation, vehicle interfaces, and other parts of the autonomy stack.
• Investigate failures across system boundaries. Reproduce and instrument each problem, isolate the responsible layer, fix integration‑owned defects, and give the owning team clear evidence when a component or infrastructure change is required.
• Develop integration‑oriented bridge blocks and adaptors for common vehicle and hardware interfaces, along with the tests and documentation needed to maintain them.
• Improve repeatability with focused integration tooling for configuration validation, deployment, diagnostics, log collection, test orchestration, and failure triage.
• Support deployment of the integrated autonomy stack to representative hardware, including software configuration, telemetry, interface troubleshooting, and lab or field debugging.
• Work with the flight‑test team to define test objectives, prepare integrated software and instrumentation, assess test readiness, support troubleshooting during test events, and analyze integration failures afterward.
• Write and maintain setup guides, reference configurations, troubleshooting runbooks, and executable examples. Contribute technical material to Pilot training.
• Surface brittle interfaces and recurring integration problems so that the responsible Pilot teams can make informed architectural decisions.
• Improve integration quality by reducing integration defects and increasing end‑to‑end test readiness.

Required qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in a field such as computer science or robotics, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience developing or integrating planning, controls, or autonomy decision‑making software.
• Strong production software engineering skills in modern C++ and Python.
• Hands‑on experience integrating software with robotic or autonomous hardware, including deployment, interfaces, telemetry, and lab or field debugging.
• Experience with software‑in‑the‑loop or hardware‑in‑the‑loop testing and automated system‑level tests.
• Experience developing and debugging software on Linux.
• Strong systems‑debugging skills, including the ability to reason across configuration, software, network, timing, and hardware boundaries.
• Ability to write maintainable tests and tools for distributed or real‑time systems.
• Ability to communicate technical findings clearly and work effectively with engineers from several disciplines.
• Ability to travel periodically and support lab, field, or flight‑test events that may occur outside normal working hours.

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience integrating across several autonomy domains, such as perception, state estimation, planning, controls, simulation, communications, or vehicle interfaces.
• Experience supporting aircraft integration or flight‑test readiness.
• Experience with robotics middleware, vehicle protocols such as MAVLink, or integration adaptors.
• Experience designing repeatable, diagnosable end‑to‑end test environments for complex autonomous systems.
• Experience with configuration‑driven systems, dependency compatibility, observability, or automated test orchestration.
• Experience delivering software for fielded, real‑time, safety‑critical, or resource‑constrained systems.
• A record of leading ambiguous technical investigations or mentoring engineers through complex integration work.