Senior Staff Engineer, Autonomy Integration Lead (R6159)

Shield; San Diego (CA); Presencial; USD 170.000 - 230.000; Tempo integral

Resumo da vaga

Shield AI’s Hivemind Pilot group seeks an Autonomy Integration Lead to assemble disparate autonomy components into cohesive reference implementations, enabling target concept of operations and validation through software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop testing.

You will coordinate with multiple teams to maintain the integration baseline, develop tests, and deploy the autonomy stack to hardware, supporting field debugging and test events.

Qualificações

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Robotics, AI or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience building, testing, and debugging nontrivial C++ software for perception, planning, robotics, autonomous systems, or related domains.
• Experience writing and debugging modern C++, including concurrency and data races, deadlocks, lifetime errors.
• Proficiency with Python for prototyping, analysis, automation, or testing.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals in algorithms, data structures, testing, debugging, and maintainable design.
• Experience developing and debugging software on Linux.
• Experience with build/dependency management systems such as Conan or Nix.

Responsabilidades

• Build and maintain stable Pilot integrated implementations, reference configurations, reusable test fixtures, and end-to-end examples.
• Collaborate with component teams to enhance the integration environment and resolve gaps in workflows, test harnesses, or extensibility.
• Develop and maintain automated software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop tests.
• Create glue layer between mission autonomy software and platform software for easier deployment.
• Investigate failures, reproduce and instrument problems, and communicate required changes to owning teams.
• Support deployment of integrated autonomy stack to hardware, including configuration, telemetry, troubleshooting, and field debugging.
• Work with Flight Operations to define test objectives, prepare instrumentation, assess readiness, and analyze failures post-tests.
• Write and maintain setup guides, reference configurations, and runbooks; contribute to Pilot training.

Conhecimentos

C++ software

Python

Linux

Concurrency

Formação

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Robotics, AI

Ferramentas

Conan

Nix

Descrição da vaga

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, visitwww.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI onLinkedIn, X, Instagram, andYouTube.

Job Description:

The Hivemind Pilot group in Hivemind Enterprise org builds algorithms and production platform-agnostic AI/autonomy software that enable teams of edge systems to perceive, reason and act toward achieving mission objectives in complex and dynamic mission environments. Our work sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, robotics, and real-time autonomous systems.

As an Autonomy Integration Lead, you will be responsible for bringing together various autonomy components into integrated reference implementations that enable targeted concept of operations, and taking these through software-in-loop and hardware-in-loop verification. You will draw on your breadth in autonomy to ensure harmonious execution of all autonomy components for effective mission enablement.

What you’ll do:

• Build and maintain stable Pilot integrated implementations, 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.
• Develop and maintain glue layer between mission autonomy software and platform software for easy integration and deployment of the 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.
• 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 Operations 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.

Projects you might work on:

• Drive strategy and implementation diverse set of autonomy reference integrations to serve various representative missions.
• Develop workflows and tooling to enable seamless deployment of autonomy software on edge devices.
• Develop documentation to assist a user of the product to easily pull together custom autonomy integrations

Preferred qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, or equivalent practical experience.
• Demonstrated experience through professional work, internships, research, or substantial projects building, testing, and debugging nontrivial C++ software for perception, planning, robotics, autonomous systems, or a closely related algorithmic domain.
• Experience writing and debugging modern C++, including safe use of common concurrency patterns and the ability to diagnose issues such as data races, deadlocks, and lifetime errors.
• Working experience with Python for prototyping, analysis, automation, or testing.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including algorithms, data structures, testing, debugging, and maintainable software design.
• Practical experience developing and debugging software on Linux.
• Practical experience working with build / dependency management systems such as Conan or Nix.

Preferred qualifications:

• Master’s degree in AI. Computer Science, Robotics or similar.
• Breadth of experience across the autonomy stack (Perception, Localization and Planning).
• Experience with multi-agent autonomy
• Experience applying VLMs or VLAs to planning, reasoning, tool use, or autonomous decision-making.
• Experience delivering software for fielded, real-time, safety-critical, or resource-constrained autonomous systems.
• Experience with software-in-the-loop or hardware-in-the-loop simulation, performance profiling, or distributed systems.

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.