Senior Staff Engineer, Autonomy Integration Lead (R6159)

The role

You will lead integration of autonomy components into reference implementations for the Hivemind Pilot group. You will build and test the integrated stack in software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop setups, and support deployment and test events with the Flight Operations team.

What you will do

• Build and maintain stable Pilot integrated implementations, reference configurations, test fixtures, and end-to-end examples.
• Partner with component teams and maintain the integration baseline.
• Develop and maintain automated software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop tests.
• Develop and maintain the glue layer between mission autonomy software and platform software.
• Investigate failures across system boundaries and fix integration-owned defects.
• Support deployment of the integrated autonomy stack to representative hardware, including telemetry and lab or field debugging.
• Work with the Flight Operations team on test objectives, readiness, troubleshooting during test events, and failure analysis.
• Write and maintain setup guides, runbooks, and executable examples, and contribute to Pilot training material.

Required qualifications

• Sign-off on this role's requirements is not separated from preferred items in the posting; see nice_to_have.
• Cleared background check required for all offers.
• Possible reference check.

Nice to have

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, or equivalent practical experience.
• Demonstrated experience building, testing, and debugging nontrivial C++ software for perception, planning, robotics, or autonomous systems.
• Experience writing and debugging modern C++, including concurrency patterns and diagnosing data races, deadlocks, and lifetime errors.
• Working experience with Python for prototyping, analysis, automation, or testing.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including algorithms, data structures, testing, and debugging.
• Practical experience developing and debugging software on Linux.
• Practical experience with build and dependency management systems such as Conan or Nix.
• Master's degree in AI, Computer Science, Robotics or similar.
• Breadth of experience across the autonomy stack (Perception, Localization and Planning).
• Experience with multi-agent autonomy.

Benefits

• Full-time regular employees receive a bonus, benefits and equity.
• Temporary employees receive a temporary benefits package, applicable after 60 days of employment.

Before you apply

• All offers are contingent on a cleared background check.
• Offers are subject to a possible reference check.
• Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits.

About the company

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company that builds intelligent systems to protect service members and civilians. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation technologies.