Senior Software Engineer, DevTools & AI Platforms

Shieldai; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus

Benefits

Equity

Job summary

Shield AI in San Diego is seeking a Senior or Staff Software Engineer for the Developer Experience Engineering team. You will design, build, and operate tools and platforms that improve the end-to-end developer experience across Hivemind, devcontainers, and the internal dev platform.

You will collaborate with engineers to reduce friction, drive adoption through documentation, and guide technical direction. Experience with AWS, Git/GitLab, Backstage, and cloud-native practices is preferred.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of software engineering experience or equivalent practical experience.
• Demonstrated technical judgment in the design and operation of developer tools, platforms, backend services, APIs, distributed systems, or related production software.
• Experience owning software from initial design through deployment, operation, adoption, and continuous improvement.
• Systems thinking and the ability to turn recurring or ambiguous developer needs into coherent, reusable solutions.
• Strong customer orientation toward internal developers and an interest in understanding and improving how engineering work gets done.
• Effective collaboration and communication across engineering teams and organizational stakeholders.
• Ability to advocate for new tools and practices, incorporate feedback, and build adoption through influence.
• Experience with AWS and cloud-native development practicesExperience with Git, GitLab, Backstage, or similar developer-platform technologies.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate tools and platforms that improve the end-to-end Hivemind developer experience.
• Advance local development workflows, devcontainers, internal developer platforms, project templates, and other reusable engineering capabilities.
• Bring agentic AI capabilities into developer tools and workflows, evaluating opportunities and turning promising ideas into reliable, practical solutions.
• Partner with engineering teams to understand developer needs, identify recurring friction, and create paved paths that improve productivity without limiting appropriate flexibility.
• Enable co-development and inner-source collaboration through accessible tooling, documentation, standards, and contribution practices.
• Drive adoption of developer tools by working closely with engineers, gathering feedback, providing guidance, and clearly communicating their value.
• Own solutions through discovery, design, implementation, testing, deployment, operation, and continuous improvement.
• Use DORA metrics, developer feedback, adoption data, and other signals to understand outcomes and guide investment.
• Contribute to technical direction through design reviews, architectural decisions, thoughtful tradeoffs, and collaboration across engineering teams.
• At the Staff level, lead cross-team initiatives, establish longer-term technical direction, and influence how Hivemind approaches developer productivity at organizational scale.

Skills

Software engineering

Technical leadership

Ownership of software lifecycle

Customer orientation

Cross-team collaboration

Advocacy for new tools

AWS

Git/GitLab/Backstage

Languages: Python/Go/JS/TS

Tools

Git

GitLab

Backstage

AWS

Job description

Shield AI in San Diego is seeking a Senior or Staff Software Engineer for the Developer Experience Engineering team. You will design, build, and operate tools and platforms that improve the end-to-end developer experience across Hivemind, devcontainers, and the internal dev platform.

You will collaborate with engineers to reduce friction, drive adoption through documentation, and guide technical direction. Experience with AWS, Git/GitLab, Backstage, and cloud-native practices is preferred.