Senior Staff Engineer, Autonomy Capabilities – Maritime (R5363)

The role

You will lead the technical direction of the maritime autonomy portfolio at Shield AI. You will build autonomy for unmanned surface vehicles, underwater vehicles and cooperating aircraft, and mentor engineers across the organization.

What you will do

• Automate unmanned surface vehicle and underwater vehicle maneuvering with advanced motion planning and safety constraints
• Develop passive and active localization and tracking with sensor fusion and observability-aware maneuvering
• Keep vehicle safety central, including run-time assurance and COLREGS adherence
• Develop distributed optimization and task allocation for heterogeneous multi-agent teams
• Write well-tested, high-performance software ready for mid-to-high TRL insertions
• Collaborate with perception, planning, simulation, hardware and operational test teams
• Deploy autonomy to real surface vehicles and support integration, demonstrations and mission log analysis
• Contribute to autonomy roadmaps by prototyping new algorithms and proposing novel solutions
• Lead technical direction for the portfolio and anticipate future needs
• Mentor engineers and turn ambiguous customer needs into design approaches

Required qualifications

• BS/MS in Computer Science, Electrical, Mechanical, Aerospace or similar degree, or equivalent practical experience
• Typically 10 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; 9 years with a Master's; or 7 years with a PhD; or equivalent
• Proficiency in C++ and Python
• Familiarity with real-time operating systems (RTOS)
• Significant background in motion planning, behavior modeling, decision-making or autonomous system design
• Significant experience with unmanned system technologies and algorithms, ideally in the space domain
• Experience with simulation tools and environments such as AFSIM or NGTS
• Strong problem-solving and system optimization skills
• Excellent communication and teamwork skills in a multidisciplinary environment
• Ability to obtain a SECRET clearance

Nice to have

• Experience in multiple aerospace domains such as air, land, sea or space
• Experience across classical control, optimization and applied ML/RL
• Background in collaborative behaviors and swarm robotics
• Familiarity with DoD or government programs
• Hands-on experience supporting integration events, customer demos or live exercises

Benefits

• Bonus
• Benefits
• Equity
• Temporary benefits package for temporary employees, applicable after 60 days of employment

Before you apply

• Ability to obtain a SECRET clearance is required
• All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check
• Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits
• Travel of about 25% of the year 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.