Senior Staff Software Engineer (Perception)

Shield AI; Washington; On-site; USD 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Excellent Medical Coverage

Mental Health Employee Assistance Plan

Paid Parental Leave

Pet Insurance

Flexible Work Hours

Onsite Gym (DC)

Gym Discount (San Diego)

Free Parking

Competitive Compensation

Stock Benefits

401K Services and Match

Job summary

Shield AI is seeking an experienced ML engineer to advance perception for autonomous systems. You will design, train, and deploy state-of-the-art vision, vision-language, and vision-language-action models, and build scalable data pipelines with robust evaluation and deployment workflows.

You will collaborate with ML researchers, autonomy engineers, and platform teams to deliver mission-ready perception capabilities for U.S.

Qualifications

• Strong knowledge of 3D vision problems and algorithms.
• Experience deploying CV models in production.
• Experience with defense customers or defense-grade systems.
• Proficiency in C++ and Python for systems engineering.

Responsibilities

• Design, train, fine-tune, and maintain vision, vision-language, and VLA models.
• Build scalable data pipelines and supervised fine-tuning workflows.
• Develop evaluation frameworks and production deployment infrastructure.
• Collaborate with researchers, autonomy engineers, and platform teams.
• Deploy and optimize ML models for embedded hardware.
• Translate research into production-ready capabilities.

Skills

PyTorch

TensorFlow

ONNX

TensorRT

C++

Python

Vision-language models

Vision-language-action models

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

ONNX

TensorRT

Job description

• The Hivemind Solutions Perception team develops the next generation of perception capabilities for autonomous systems by combining state-of-the-art machine learning with the proven foundations of computer vision
• The team advances how autonomous platforms understand and interpret the world by developing vision, vision-language (VLM), and vision-language-action (VLA) models that tackle core perception challenges such as object understanding, scene interpretation, and mission-relevant environmental awareness
• Working at the intersection of research and production, our engineers build the data pipelines, supervised fine-tuning (SFT) workflows, evaluation frameworks, and deployment infrastructure needed to transform cutting-edge AI research into reliable, mission-ready perception capabilities
• In this role, you’ll develop and deploy advanced machine learning models that enable autonomous systems to better understand, reason about, and interact with their environment
• You’ll partner closely with machine learning researchers, autonomy engineers, perception engineers, and platform teams to translate emerging AI capabilities into reliable, production-ready systems for U.S. and international defense customers
• This is an ideal opportunity for engineers who enjoy building state-of-the-art AI systems while solving the practical challenges of deploying them on operational autonomous platforms
• Model Development – Design, train, fine-tune, and maintain state-of-the-art vision, vision-language, and vision-language-action models that improve perception and decision-making for autonomous systems
• Data Pipelines & Model Training – Build scalable data pipelines, supervised fine-tuning (SFT) workflows, and evaluation loops that continuously improve model performance on mission-relevant tasks
• Model Deployment & Optimization – Deploy and optimize machine learning models for embedded hardware using technologies such as ONNX, TensorRT, and hardware-accelerated inference frameworks
• Perception & Autonomy Applications – Apply modern machine learning techniques to solve challenging perception and autonomy problems across aerial and other autonomous systems operating in complex, real-world environments
• Research-to-Production – Translate cutting-edge machine learning research into production-ready capabilities by balancing model performance, robustness, computational efficiency, and operational reliability
• Cross-functional Collaboration – Partner closely with perception, autonomy, platform, and software engineering teams to integrate machine learning capabilities into mission-ready autonomous systems
• Model Evaluation & Validation – Develop benchmarks, testing methodologies, and evaluation frameworks to measure model performance, identify failure modes, and guide future improvements
• Continuous Improvement – Improve training infrastructure, developer tooling, deployment workflows, and model lifecycle management to accelerate experimentation and production delivery

Benefits

• Excellent Medical Coverage
• Mental Health Employee Assistance Program
• Paid Parental Leave
• Pet Insurance
• Flexible Work Hours
• Onsite Gym (DC)
• Gym Discount (San Diego)
• Free Parking
• Competitive Compensation
• Stock Benefits
• 401K Services and Match

Ability to obtain a SECRET clearanceTypically requires a minimum of 10 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 9 years and a Master’s degree; or 7 years with a PhD; or equivalent work experienceStrong understanding of 3D vision problems/algorithmsExperience with machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch and TensorFlowDemonstrated expertise in deploying models using TensorRT and ONNXExperience training an deploying ML models for computer vision in a production settingStrong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to translate research into practical applicationsMastery of machine learning fundamentalsProficiency in C++ and PythonExperience with developing autonomous systems for defense customersExperience with training/finetuning vision-language models, vision-language-action models, and/or world modelsContributions to open-source projects in machine learning or computer visionTrack record of publications in leading computer vision and robotics conferences and journals (e.g., CVPR, ICCV/ECCV, RAL, ICRA)