Principal Engineer, Edge Applications & Mission Systems (R6245)

Shield AI•San Diego, CA

1d•$220,000 - $330,000

About The Position

Shield AI is hiring a Principal Engineer to drive the technical direction, architecture, and delivery of its edge application platform for autonomous systems. The platform connects operators, autonomous platforms, mission data, and external command-and-control systems, supporting applications from single-vehicle ground control through coordinated fleet operations and theater-level mission planning and execution. The role will shape a platform that customers and partners can integrate, extend, and adapt to new missions. Its scope includes ground control stations (GCS), command and control (C2), battle-management system (BMS) integration, fleet and configuration management, and agentic workflows for planning, supervising, and managing autonomous robotic systems. As technical lead, the Principal Engineer will apply defense-domain knowledge and software engineering judgment to deliver operational products. The role remains hands-on in architecture, critical implementation, and technical problem-solving while aligning engineering teams, product leaders, customers, and other stakeholders around a technical roadmap.

Requirements

15+ years of professional software engineering experience, or an equivalent record of technical depth and impact, including substantial responsibility for complex production systems.
5+ years of technical leadership as a technical lead, architect, Principal Engineer, or equivalent, with demonstrated influence across multiple teams and ownership of significant architectural decisions.
Deep experience developing defense GCS and C2 applications, with working knowledge of mission planning, mission execution, operator workflows, and integration with broader battle-management environments.
Demonstrated record of shipping and sustaining software products for defense customers, including operational deployment, customer acceptance, and improvements informed by field use.
Strong software architecture and implementation skills across distributed systems, application services, APIs, data management, and operator-facing software.
Experience building extensible platforms used by multiple teams and external customers, including interface design, reusable capabilities, versioning, and integration across organizational boundaries.
Experience with autonomous robotics applications, including fleet operations, configuration management, telemetry, and interactions between ground applications and platform-side autonomy.
Strong understanding of networked systems and edge deployments, including performance, reliability, security, and behavior under limited or interrupted connectivity.
Ability to translate ambiguous customer and stakeholder needs into technical roadmaps, executable plans, and delivered capabilities; excellent written and verbal communication.
Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Robotics, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience developing or integrating platforms such as Lattice, other extensible defense C2/BMS products, or comparable mission-management systems.
Experience with multi-domain operations, heterogeneous autonomous fleets, and the relationship between tactical GCS applications and higher-echelon mission systems.
Experience delivering agentic or AI-assisted applications, including workflow orchestration, human-machine teaming, evaluation, and operator supervision.
Experience with geospatial applications, common operational pictures, mission rehearsal, telemetry replay, or post-mission analysis.
Experience with secure software delivery into defense environments, including collaboration with cybersecurity and authorization teams.

Responsibilities

Own and evolve the architecture across operator applications, backend services, mission data, integration interfaces, and edge deployment environments.
Guide application capabilities from single-vehicle ground control workflows to multi-vehicle supervision, heterogeneous fleet operations, and theater-level planning, execution monitoring, and battlespace management.
Establish APIs, SDKs, shared data models, extension mechanisms, and integration tooling so customers and partners can add platforms, data sources, applications, and workflows while preserving compatibility.
Lead interoperability with external mission systems and defense C2 environments, including exchange of vehicle state, mission information, sensor-derived data, and operational context.
Partner with autonomy, AI, product, and design teams on operator planning, supervision, execution, and debrief workflows; define authority, approval boundaries, observability, and evaluation criteria for AI-assisted workflows.
Own fleet and configuration architecture for asset inventory, readiness and health monitoring, software and configuration versioning, compatibility management, controlled updates, rollback, and traceability.
Design edge applications for intermittent connectivity, constrained bandwidth and compute, distributed state, and partial failures, ensuring predictable behavior in disconnected and degraded environments.
Translate product strategy, customer needs, and operational feedback into architectural priorities, milestones, and measurable deliverables; resolve dependencies and tradeoffs among delivery, platform investment, reliability, and technical debt.
Partner with integration, test, field, and customer teams from requirements through acceptance, deployment, and sustainment, using field experience, telemetry, and customer feedback to improve releases.
Remain directly involved in architecture, critical implementation work, and technical problem-solving while aligning engineering teams and stakeholders around the technical roadmap.