Staff Software Engineer, Autonomous Pilot Integration - Emerging Domains (R5401)

About Shield AI

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.

The Autonomous Pilot Integration team for Emerging Domains builds autonomy solutions for new platforms and mission profiles outside Shield AI's established portfolios-including space (satellites, missile defense), maritime (USV and UUV integration), and contested logistics (unmanned helicopters and related autonomous resupply platforms).

The team takes on short-term R&D and integration efforts-often standing up the first autonomy on a brand-new platform or mission-with the intent that successful efforts grow into larger, multi-year programs.

We combine capabilities from the Autonomy Capabilities team (motion planning, tactics), the Perception team (e.g., ViDAR, ATR), and the HivemindSDK-selectively leveraging existing Shield AI autonomy solutions where they apply-to develop autonomy that runs on these new platforms.

Our engineers write new autonomy code-such as mission behaviors, platform-specific control, multi-agent coordination, contingencies, and executive autonomy-and own it end-to-end from software-in-the-loop, to hardware-in-the-loop, to vehicle-in-the-loop, to live test exercise.

In this role, you'll lead the technical delivery of complex autonomy capabilities across Emerging Domains, helping establish first-of-their-kind autonomy solutions for new platforms and mission areas. You'll own challenging integration efforts, influence technical direction across multiple subsystems, and work closely with platform teams and cross-functional engineering organizations to transition early R&D efforts into scalable, operational capabilities.