Mission Systems Software Engineer (R5888)

The role

You will be a software mission systems engineer, defining and maintaining the software architecture for a real-time mission computing system on an autonomous aircraft. You will work with hardware, software and systems teams from design reviews through lab test, flight test and fielding.

What you will do

• Serve as software mission systems engineer for a safety- and mission-critical real-time mission-computing system.
• Define and maintain the end-to-end software architecture, including APIs and component boundaries.
• Architect for deterministic real-time performance, including scheduling, latency, jitter and resource allocation.
• Develop architecture views, interface definitions, timing diagrams, resource budgets and technical decision records.
• Integrate sensors, effectors, communications, navigation, autonomy and command-and-control with hardware and test teams.
• Design for mission resilience, fault detection, redundancy, cybersecurity and requirements traceability.
• Establish engineering practices for concurrency, synchronization, memory management and interface control.
• Define and execute verification strategies across HIL/SIL labs, simulations, flight tests and deployed systems.
• Maintain technical ownership through the lifecycle, including evaluating supplier designs and managing technical debt.

Required qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering or a related technical field.
• Senior level: 5+ years of professional software-engineering experience, including 1+ years in software architecture, systems architecture or technical leadership.
• Staff level: 8+ years of professional software-engineering experience, including 3+ years in software architecture, systems architecture or technical leadership.
• Senior Staff level: 10+ years of professional software-engineering experience, including 5+ years in software architecture, systems architecture or technical leadership.
• Experience developing embedded, distributed, real-time, safety-critical or mission-critical software systems.
• Proficiency in C, C++, Rust or another strongly typed systems-programming language.
• Strong understanding of real-time principles: scheduling, concurrency, synchronization, latency, jitter, memory management and deterministic execution.
• Experience with embedded operating systems or RTOSs, middleware, interprocess communication, networking and data-distribution technologies.
• Experience defining software architectures, APIs, interface-control documents, data flows, deployment models and resource budgets.
• Experience integrating software with hardware, sensors, communications, navigation, effectors or other mission-system components.
• Experience supporting software through requirements, design reviews, implementation, integration, verification, system test and deployment.
• Working knowledge of systems-engineering processes, requirements management, traceability, configuration management and verification and validation.

Nice to have

• Experience developing software for autonomous aircraft, unmanned aircraft systems, avionics, mission computers, robotics or aerospace and defense platforms.
• Experience with A-GRA, AMS-GRA, OMS, UCI, FACE or other government reference architectures and open-mission-system standards.
• Experience integrating autonomy, mission management, command-and-control, sensor processing, communications, navigation and effector capabilities.
• Familiarity with airworthiness or certification standards such as DO-178C, DO-254, ARP4754A or military airworthiness guidance.
• Experience with CPU-, GPU-, FPGA- or accelerator-based heterogeneous computing architectures.
• Experience with publish/subscribe middleware, quality-of-service controls, high-rate data distribution, precision timing and time synchronization.
• Experience designing cybersecurity controls for embedded or mission systems, including trust boundaries, least privilege, secure communications and software integrity.
• Experience with HIL/SIL environments, simulation systems, laboratory integration, flight testing or operational deployment.
• Experience evaluating supplier designs, RTOSs, middleware, computing platforms or third-party software for integration readiness.
• Active or previously held U.S. Department of Defense Secret clearance.

Benefits

• Bonus
• Equity
• Benefits package (for full-time regular employees)
• Temporary benefits package, applicable after 60 days of employment (for temporary employees)

Before you apply

• Offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check.
• U.S. citizenship may be required for security clearance eligibility.
• Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Department of Defense security clearance is required.

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.