Senior Staff Software Engineer, Autonomous Pilot Integration – Expeditionary (R5193)

Shield AI; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 170,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Shield AI is seeking a senior technical lead for Expeditionary autonomy to own the strategic direction of autonomy architecture across V-BAT and X-BAT platforms. You will define long-term technical roadmaps, tackle complex integration challenges, and align mission behaviors with platform interfaces and payload integration.

You will work with aircraft, autonomy capabilities, perception, and field operations teams to deliver scalable, mission-ready autonomy software for U.S.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading autonomy software initiatives for unmanned aircraft.
• Strong system integration and collaboration across multi-team projects.
• Experience with mission planning, perception, and multi-agent operations is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical direction for Expeditionary autonomy across V-BAT and X-BAT platforms.
• Define long-term technical strategy and solve complex integration challenges.
• Collaborate with Aircraft, Autonomy Capabilities, Perception, and field teams to deliver scalable autonomy software.

Skills

Autonomy software leadership

Unmanned aircraft integration

System integration

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 unmanned aircraft operating in 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 the HivemindSDK to 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 own the technical direction for the Expeditionary portfolio, driving the evolution of autonomy architecture across V-BAT and X-BAT while ensuring scalable, mission-ready solutions that support current operators and future platforms. You\'ll define long-term technical strategy, solve the organization\'s most complex integration challenges, and influence the direction of autonomy software spanning mission behaviors, platform interfaces, payload integration, executive autonomy, and multi-agent operations.

You\'ll partner closely with the Aircraft team, Autonomy Capabilities, Perception, GCS, Strategic Systems (ACP), engineering leadership, customer/program offices, and operational users to ensure Expeditionary autonomy continues to evolve while remaining reliable in operational environments.