Senior Staff Engineer, Autonomy and Motion Planning (R5538)

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. For more information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube. 

What you'll do:

Develop tactical autonomy software to enable unmanned platforms to perform complex missions across air, land, sea, and space domains 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 of the software development lifecycle, from requirements capture through design, implementation, verification, and validation, utilizing tools and workflows consistent with collaborative high-quality software development

Champion a product-line mindset in technology road-mapping and to enable reuse of behaviors across multiple projects and portfolios

Utilize your software and systems expertise to architect behaviors as scalable software subsystems, that may interact directly or indirectly with a breadth of system components (e.g., sensor processing, state estimation, peer-to-peer communications, contingency management, actuation, and payload interfacing)

Leverage internal product and program-specific engineering teams to rapidly deliver state-of-the-art capabilities to vehicle platforms (whether internally and externally owned), with a clear path towards architecture and capability evolution over time

Collaborate with external teams, aligning on interfacing requirements between diverse systems, often working closely with vehicle integration teams and associated operational subject matter experts (e.g., fighter pilots, UAV operators, etc.)

Act as a subject matter expert for software engineering, representing software equities in a multi-stakeholder environment including engineering, business and sales leadership.

Travel to co-locate with end-users and/or other teams up to 20% of the time

Required qualifications:

BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field

Proficient in production-level C++ software development

7+ years' experience in one or more of the following: software sub-system scheduling and integration, 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

Desire to work in a highly collaborative, fast paced, enthusiastic, and mission-centric environment

Capacity to act as the technical owner for an entire software system, including stakeholder engagement, requirements definition, roadmap management, team co-ordination, design, implementation, sustainment, and evolution

Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Secret security clearance

Preferred qualifications:

Experience across a breadth of technology readiness levels (TRLs) and demonstration of bridging concepts from research-grade to operationally ready

Experience with mission systems integration, and ideally, hands-on experience supporting integration events and/or flight demonstrations

Experience across a multitude of application areas, including but not limited to:

Collaborative mission planning, behavior planning, synchronized teaming

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