Engineer II, Automated Test (R6288)

Shield AI•San Mateo, CA

11h•$110,000 - $160,000

About The Position

Shield AI’s Hivemind Software Engineering Integration and Test team is seeking an Automated Test Engineer to design, develop, and scale automated testing and CI/CD infrastructure for its autonomy platform. The role supports software for unmanned aircraft and robotic platforms operating in complex, contested, and GPS-denied environments. The software ecosystem includes production flight code, simulation and synthetic environment tooling, mission planning and orchestration systems, Ground Control Station applications, telemetry and data pipelines, and cloud-native developer infrastructure. The engineer will build automation, validation infrastructure, and AI-assisted workflows to help ensure the reliability, scalability, and quality of software across onboard edge compute, APIs, web-based operator interfaces, simulation environments, and hardware-in-the-loop systems. Working with software, autonomy, simulation, and systems engineering teams, the role contributes to a high-assurance development environment focused on mission-critical reliability and rapid iteration. The position calls for Python automation, distributed-systems testing, developer tooling, and modern CI/CD experience, with interest in autonomy, aerospace, robotics, or safety-critical software. Experience with AI-assisted development and intelligent automation is valued. Compensation is $110,000–$160,000 per year. The full-time regular employee offer package includes pay within the listed range, bonus, benefits, and equity. Offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check. Compensation depends on factors including skills, experience, licenses and certifications, and work location.

Requirements

At least 2 years of experience building scalable, maintainable automation frameworks and/or developer tooling in Python.
At least 2 years of experience with package management, dependency management, and build systems such as Conan, pip, setuptools, Poetry, Nix, or similar.
At least 2 years of experience building tools for automated log collection, analytics, reporting, and failure triage.
Strong understanding of asynchronous and concurrent programming in Python for scalable automation and parallel test execution.
Experience developing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines using GitLab CI, YAML, and shell scripting.
Experience with automated testing of distributed systems, backend services, APIs, and web-based UIs.
Familiarity with modern test frameworks, automated validation strategies, and software quality methodologies.
Experience working in Linux-based development environments.
Strong debugging and problem-solving skills in complex software systems.
Excellent collaboration and communication skills in cross-functional engineering environments.

Nice To Haves

Experience integrating Python with native C/C++ libraries and applications using bindings, wrappers, subprocess interfaces, or interoperability tooling.
Proficiency with Go and/or TypeScript for automation tooling or UI test development.
Experience with C++ development or testing.
Aerospace, robotics, autonomy, or safety-critical software experience.
Familiarity with simulation, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL), or embedded system testing.

Responsibilities

Design, develop, and maintain automated test frameworks for autonomy and UI applications.
Develop scalable infrastructure for functional, integration, regression, system, and end-to-end testing across distributed software and hardware environments.
Create and maintain GitLab CI/CD pipelines using YAML configurations and shell scripting for automated build, test, and deployment workflows.
Build Python workflow automation tools to improve test execution efficiency, reporting, environment setup, and developer productivity.
Develop and maintain UI and API test automation using Go and TypeScript for web-based operator interfaces and mission control applications.
Integrate automated testing into continuous integration environments to support rapid software delivery and reliability.
Collaborate with software, autonomy, simulation, and systems engineering teams to define verification strategies and improve software quality.
Develop automated validation solutions for safety-critical and mission-critical aerospace software.
Create test harnesses, simulators, stubs, and mocks for verification in simulated and hardware-in-the-loop environments.
Analyze test results, troubleshoot failures, and work with development teams to isolate root causes and improve reliability.
Improve test coverage, execution speed, maintainability, and observability of automated test systems.
Contribute to software quality standards, coding best practices, and automation architecture decisions.
Maintain technical documentation for test frameworks, automation workflows, CI/CD infrastructure, and validation procedures.
Support release qualification and traceability between requirements, tests, and verification results where applicable.
Represent the Integration and Test role in design reviews and advocate for engineering excellence and continuous improvement.
Develop AI-assisted engineering workflows and analytics tools using coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex, and related LLM-based platforms for test generation, failure triage, debugging, and developer productivity.
Design intelligent automation pipelines using AI-assisted code generation, log analysis, test analysis, and workflow orchestration to accelerate verification and validation.
Evaluate and integrate emerging AI-driven software engineering tools into automated test and CI/CD ecosystems while maintaining reliability, traceability, and engineering quality.