Staff Autonomy Engineer: Behavior & Motion Planning

Shield AI; Northern, San Diego (KY, CA); Hybrid; USD 200,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus

Benefits

Equity

Job summary

Shield AI is seeking software engineers to advance autonomous trajectory planning for real-world environments. You will implement state-of-the-art planning algorithms in C++, collaborate across teams, and contribute to scalable autonomy software in the Hivemind SDK.

This role emphasizes mentoring, rigorous testing, and translating requirements into robust code, with opportunities from prototyping in Python to flight-testing mature capabilities.

Qualifications

• Master's degree in computer science, robotics, or a related field, with 5+ years of experience (or PhD with 4+ years).
• Proven experience building and debugging C++ software for motion planning or autonomous systems.
• Experience with Python, Linux, concurrency, and debugging data races/deadlocks.
• Strong fundamentals in algorithms, data structures, testing, version control, and CI/CD.

Responsibilities

• Research, design, and implement motion planning algorithms for autonomous systems.
• Build robust C++ software with Python for prototyping and testing.
• Develop tests and evaluate planning stack in simulation and hardware.
• Diagnose complex algorithmic and software failures.
• Collaborate to refine requirements and deliver capabilities.
• Mentor junior engineers and stay current with robotics advances.

Skills

C++

Python

Linux

Algorithms

Data structures

CI/CD

Version control

Education

Master's degree in Computer Science / Robotics

PhD in related field

Job description

Shield AI is seeking software engineers to advance autonomous trajectory planning for real-world environments. You will implement state-of-the-art planning algorithms in C++, collaborate across teams, and contribute to scalable autonomy software in the Hivemind SDK.

This role emphasizes mentoring, rigorous testing, and translating requirements into robust code, with opportunities from prototyping in Python to flight-testing mature capabilities.