Principal Autonomy Architect (R4375)

Shield AI•Washington, DC

About The Position

As an Autonomy Architect within the Hivemind Pilot team, you will lead the development of the Pilot stack, Shield AIâs edge autonomy offering. This is a pivotal technical role that blends architectural ownership with hands-on involvement in methodology development and direction setting. Your work will directly shape how autonomy software is developed, deployed, and operated across a range of systemsâfrom aircraft to maritime and ground vehicles. You will partner closely with the Pilot Director and cross-functional leadership to define and execute the vision for Pilot: an extensible, developer-focused, autonomy SDK that enables solving the various problem areas typical to edge autonomy ranging from state-estimation to task-planning. Youâll be accountable for technical correctness, run-time sophistication, and system reliability required for mission-critical applications.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in the AI & autonomy domain
Deep expertise and experience in various areas of autonomy including discrete planning for task assignment / scheduling, path-planning (sampling-based, graph-based), next-best-view planning, distributed state-estimation, collaborative object tracking, and active perception
Experience deploying complex autonomy software to relevant real-world platforms with demonstrable results
Experience working with a large team of engineers as a technical mentor / guide with the ability to enhance rigor and correctness in methodologies across the stack
Experience in forming the long-term vision and strategy for the technology stack in support of product needs bridging the gap between feasibility and rapid evolution
Strong experience with software development using C++.

Nice To Haves

Experience in the defense and aerospace domain
Experience with assured processes toward software certification (DO-178C).
Experience deploying cutting edge technology to large (Group 4/5) aircraft
Familiarity with CI/CD and software design principles

Responsibilities

Define and develop robust methodologies for some of the core challenges pertaining to large-scale teaming in contested environments including but not limited to collaborative decision making, path-planning, object tracking, state estimation and intelligent multi-agent autonomy solutions.
Collaborate with a strong team of autonomy engineers to take concepts all the way through production ensuring robust, resilient implementations that operate with a high level of reliability
Collaborate with Pilot Director to shape the roadmap for Pilot to accelerate value delivery to customers and sophistication of the stack.
Collaborate with cross-functional leaders to inform their roadmaps and influence capability development with an eye toward long-term vision
Collaborate with other architects to ensure seamless integration of the Pilot stack with other elements of Hivemind SDK for a consistent customer experience.