Senior Software Engineer, Frontend Platform (R5790)

Shield AI•San Diego, CA

1d•$130,000 - $240,000

About The Position

Shield AI is seeking a full-stack engineer focused on customer-facing products, developer tools, and AI-assisted workflows. The engineer will partner with internal subject-matter experts to build an extensible application platform and applications for Forge, Shield AI’s engineering platform for building, integrating, testing, and operating Hivemind capabilities. Forge connects autonomy developers with the applications, services, compute, data, and workflows they need to move from local development to deployed systems, and is designed for both internal Hivemind developers and external engineering teams. The role will help evolve Forge into an integrated engineering environment with shared foundations for APIs, user interfaces, extensions, model integrations, and agent tools. It involves work across frontend architecture, backend services, and model integrations to validate the platform through real workflows. The work supports engineers as they understand complex systems, develop autonomy software, investigate failures, and deliver reliable capabilities faster. The position focuses on building and operating a frontend-oriented development platform embedded in AI Pilot training, validation, and deployment workflows. The engineer will create a composable UI architecture and typed, versioned contracts for independently developed applications; establish application packaging and lifecycle workflows; and enable AI experiences and agent harnesses to use context and authorized tools. The engineer will also work with simulation, autonomy, and ML experts, as well as infrastructure, security, product, and design teams. The posting lists annual compensation of $130,000–$240,000, with location-specific ranges of $130,000–$200,000 in San Diego and $150,000–$240,000 in San Mateo. Compensation is influenced by factors including skills, experience, credentials, and work location. Full-time regular employee offers include pay within the listed range, bonus, benefits, and equity; temporary employee offers have a separate temporary benefits package applicable after 60 days.

Requirements

Experience owning production full-stack applications from design and implementation through rollout and support.
Strong proficiency with TypeScript and React or an equivalent modern web stack.
Experience building production backend services in Go, Python, Rust, or a comparable language.
Experience designing typed, versioned APIs and contracts between independently deployed components.
Strong knowledge of web and distributed-system architecture, including state management, routing, asynchronous communication, browser security, authentication, authorization, and failure handling.
Experience building real-time and high-performance applications, such as with WebGL or WebGPU.
Sound judgment about when to extend an existing system, introduce an abstraction, or keep a solution intentionally small.
Clear communication skills and ability to work across frontend, backend, infrastructure, and product disciplines.

Nice To Haves

Experience with extensible application platforms, including plugin systems, micro-frontends, web sandboxing, Web Components, or VS Code extensions.
Experience with agent-tool integrations and protocols such as Model Context Protocol.
Experience with API gateways, reverse proxies, service catalogs, or policy-driven routing.
Experience with schema-driven API development using OpenAPI, JSON Schema, Protocol Buffers, gRPC, or generated clients.
Experience with Kubernetes and ingress or gateways.
Experience with composable user experiences such as dashboard builders, configurable layouts, data visualization, or collaborative application state.
Experience in robotics, autonomy, simulation, aerospace, or other domains where software interacts with real-world systems.
Experience shipping Electron applications.

Responsibilities

Build and operate a frontend-focused development platform embedded in workflows used to train, validate, and deploy the AI Pilot.
Design a composable UI architecture that lets applications contribute apps, dashboards, commands, widgets, and shared resource context.
Define typed, versioned contracts between the platform and independently developed Forge applications.
Create workflows for teams to package, publish, configure, install, upgrade, and disable applications.
Enable Forge’s native AI experiences and external agent harnesses to understand active context, invoke authorized tools, navigate applications, and compose dashboards.
Deliver consistent application behavior across local-development and AI Factory environments.
Partner with simulation, autonomy, and ML subject-matter experts to build initial applications, validate the platform against real workflows, and incorporate learnings.
Work across infrastructure, security, product, and design to shape platform architecture and engineering practices.
Own production full-stack applications from design and implementation through rollout and support.