Senior Staff Engineer, Software Autonomy (R5125)

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-BAT aircraft, 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.

About the role

As a Senior Staff Software Engineer, Autonomy, you will function as a hands-on technical lead and subject matter expert, collaborating with Shield AI teammates and customers to build edge-AI and autonomy software for platforms across sea, air, and space. This role involves working closely with customers to understand their requirements, writing code, developing new capabilities, ensuring successful software/hardware integration, and mentoring teammates.

Responsibilities

• Become an expert user of the Hivemind Enterprise Autonomy Software Development Kit.
• Design tactical autonomy algorithms to enable unmanned aircraft to perform complex missions across air, land, and sea domains with minimal human supervision.
• Develop high-performance software modules incorporating planning, decision-making, and behavior execution strategies for dynamic and adversarial environments.
• Implement and test behavior architectures enabling multi-agent coordination, target engagement, reconnaissance, and survivability in contested scenarios.
• Work at the intersection of classical autonomy and machine learning, blending rule-based systems with learning-based methods such as reinforcement learning.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including perception, planning, simulation, hardware, and flight test to ensure seamless integration of autonomy solutions on real-world platforms.
• Deploy autonomy capabilities to real platforms and participate in field tests and flight demos, validating performance in operationally relevant conditions.
• Analyze mission logs and performance data to diagnose failures, optimize behavior models, and inform iterative development.
• Contribute to the autonomy roadmap by researching and prototyping new algorithms, identifying tactical capability gaps, and proposing novel solutions.
• Support defense-focused programs and customer needs by adapting autonomy solutions to evolving mission sets, compliance requirements, and operational feedback.
• Provide software handover and training to customers for their autonomy development efforts.
• Develop and maintain technical documentation for customer and internal use.

Examples of Projects

• Autonomous teaming drones
• Teaming between helicopters and drones
• Autonomy on Robodogs
• AI Pilots for Fighter Jets

Requirements

• Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Aerospace, AI, Computer Science, Robotics, or a related engineering field.
• 12+ years of industry experience.
• 3+ years of hands-on experience writing software for autonomy/robotics applications.
• 2+ years of experience working in a startup environment.
• Strong technical background in software engineering.
• Strong proficiency in writing modern C++ code.
• Intermediate proficiency in writing Python code.
• Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to converse fluently in Hindi and English.
• Ability to travel and stay deployed at customer sites across India/Asia (~30% travel).

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in the defense aviation or robotics industry.
• Ability to travel to the USA for up to 3 months at a time for training.

Schedule

Members of this team typically travel around 10-15% of the year (to different office locations, customer sites, and flight integration events). Travel to and stay at customer sites as required for deployment, training, and flight testing (~30% travel).

Pay

Salary compensation is influenced by skill set, level of experience, licenses and certifications, and specific work location. Full-time regular employee offer package includes pay within range listed, bonus, benefits, and equity. Temporary employee offer package includes pay within range listed and temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment).