Senior Software Engineer, Autonomy Integration (R6035)

Shield; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Bonus

Benefits

Job summary

Shield AI is hiring a Software Engineer, Autonomy Integration, embedded in the Pilot Integration team. You will build durable integration environments, reference configurations, and end‑to‑end tests across planning, controls, perception, and simulation to support hardware and flight testing.

You’ll collaborate with cross‑functional teams to resolve gaps in workflows, develop tests for embedded autonomy components, and advance repeatability with tooling and documentation.

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 across config, 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 with engineers from several disciplines.
• Ability to travel periodically and support 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 workflow gaps.
• 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, reproduce and instrument problems, and provide evidence for architectural decisions.
• Develop integration oriented bridge blocks and adaptors for common vehicle and hardware interfaces.
• Improve repeatability with integration tooling for configuration validation, deployment, diagnostics, and test orchestration.
• Support deployment of the integrated autonomy stack to hardware, including telemetry and lab/field debugging.
• Collaborate with flight‑test to define objectives, prepare instrumentation, assess readiness and analyze failures.
• Write setup guides, reference configurations, troubleshooting runbooks, and training material.
• Surface brittle interfaces and recurring integration problems for architectural decisions.
• Improve integration quality by reducing defects and increasing end‑to‑end test readiness.

Skills

C++

Python

Planning software

Autonomy software

Linux

Systems debugging

Test automation

Cross-disciplinary collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS or 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.

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Full-time regular employee offer package:

Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity

Temporary employee offer package:

Pay within range listed above + temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)

Salary compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, licenses and certifications, and specific work location. All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check. Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits. Please speak to your talent acquisition representative for more information.

Shield AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed toequal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.