Staff Software Engineer — Autonomy & Multi‑Agent Systems

Shield; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Shield AI’s Autonomy Capabilities Team seeks a senior software professional to advance autonomous capabilities across air, land, sea, and space platforms. You will blend control theory with optimization to deliver real-world software integrated into diverse vehicle systems.

This role requires leading multi-disciplinary teams, owning software architecture, and maintaining an active U.S. Secret clearance. Travel up to 20% is expected.

Qualifications

• BS/MS/PhD in CS, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or a related field
• Proficient in production-level C++ software development.
• 7+ years’ experience in software sub-system scheduling, behavior planning, task and resource allocation, motion planning, optimization, or flight controls.
• Experience with collaborative software development tools for version control, issue tracking, code reviews, and release management.
• Proven ability to lead multi-disciplinary teams, set technical direction, and manage full project lifecycles from concept to deployment.
• Capacity to learn and grow individually, while mentoring junior team members effectively, building team cohesion and capacity.
• Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Secret security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Develop tactical autonomy software to enable unmanned platforms to perform complex missions across air, land, sea, and space with minimal human supervision.
• Implement and test behaviors that enable multi-agent coordination, target engagement, reconnaissance, and survivability in contested scenarios.
• Work throughout the entire software development lifecycle, from requirements capture through design, implementation, verification, and validation, utilizing collaborative high-quality software workflows.
• Champion a product-line mindset in technology road-mapping and to enable reuse of behaviors across multiple projects and portfolios.
• Architect behaviors as scalable software subsystems interacting with sensors, state estimation, peer-to-peer communications, contingency management, actuation, and payload interfacing.
• Collaborate with internal teams to rapidly deliver state-of-the-art capabilities to vehicle platforms with evolving architecture.
• Collaborate with external teams to align interfacing requirements between diverse systems and vehicle integration teams.
• Act as SME for software engineering in a multi-stakeholder environment including engineering, business and sales.
• Travel to co-locate with end-users and/or other teams up to 20% of the time.

Skills

C++ development

System integration

Leadership

Team collaboration

Motion planning

Education

BS/MS/PhD in CS, AE, EE, Robotics, or related

Tools

ROS

OMPL

Optimization solvers

Version control

Issue tracking

Code reviews

Release management

Job description

Shield AI’s Autonomy Capabilities Team seeks a senior software professional to advance autonomous capabilities across air, land, sea, and space platforms. You will blend control theory with optimization to deliver real-world software integrated into diverse vehicle systems.

This role requires leading multi-disciplinary teams, owning software architecture, and maintaining an active U.S. Secret clearance. Travel up to 20% is expected.