Senior Staff Engineer, Mission Systems Software - Ranger (R6394)

Shield AI•Seattle, WA

2d•$230,000 - $350,000

About The Position

Shield AI is seeking a Mission Systems Software Engineer to develop real-time mission-computing solutions for autonomous aircraft equipped with sensors and weapons. The role will establish software architecture for a real-time system operating in a multi-level environment and work with hardware, software, and systems teams to reach a consensus design. The engineer will guide new system and software designs from preliminary and critical design reviews through laboratory testing, flight testing, and fielding. The position provides software engineering leadership for a safety- and mission-critical real-time mission-computing system aligned with A-GRA and AMS-GRA principles, profiles, interfaces, and data standards. It owns the end-to-end software architecture, spanning mission applications, platform services, middleware, operating-system interfaces, hardware-abstraction layers, networking, data distribution, component boundaries, and APIs. The role addresses deterministic real-time performance, mission resilience, assurance, integration, verification, and the system lifecycle, collaborating across hardware, FPGA, cybersecurity, safety, systems, integration, and test teams.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field.
8+ years of professional software-engineering experience, including 3+ years in software architecture, systems architecture, or technical leadership.
Experience developing embedded, distributed, real-time, safety-critical, or mission-critical software systems.
Proficiency in C, C++, Rust, or another strongly typed systems-programming language.
Strong understanding of real-time software principles, including scheduling, concurrency, synchronization, latency, jitter, memory management, and deterministic execution.
Experience with embedded operating systems or RTOSs, middleware, interprocess communication, networking, and data-distribution technologies.
Experience defining software architectures, APIs, interface-control documents, data flows, deployment models, and system resource budgets.
Experience integrating software with hardware, sensors, communications systems, navigation systems, effectors, or other mission-system components.
Experience supporting software through requirements development, design reviews, implementation, integration, verification, system test, and deployment.
Working knowledge of systems-engineering processes, requirements management, traceability, configuration management, and verification and validation.
Ability to analyze system performance using instrumentation, telemetry, traces, profiling, network captures, timing data, and resource-utilization measurements.
Strong cross-functional technical leadership, problem-solving, written communication, and presentation skills.
Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Department of Defense security clearance; U.S. citizenship may be required for clearance eligibility.

Nice To Haves

Experience developing software for autonomous aircraft, unmanned aircraft systems, avionics, mission computers, robotics, or aerospace and defense platforms.
Experience with A-GRA, AMS-GRA, OMS, UCI, FACE, or other government reference architectures and open-mission-system standards.
Experience integrating autonomy, mission management, command-and-control, sensor processing, communications, navigation, and effector capabilities.
Familiarity with airworthiness, safety-assurance, or certification standards such as DO-178C, DO-254, ARP4754A, or applicable military airworthiness guidance.
Experience with CPU-, GPU-, FPGA-, or accelerator-based heterogeneous computing architectures.
Experience with publish/subscribe middleware, quality-of-service controls, high-rate data distribution, precision timing, and distributed time synchronization.
Experience designing cybersecurity controls for embedded or mission systems, including trust boundaries, least privilege, authentication, authorization, secure communications, and software integrity.
Experience with HIL/SIL environments, simulation systems, laboratory integration, flight testing, or operational deployment.
Experience evaluating supplier designs, RTOSs, middleware, computing platforms, or third-party software for architectural compliance and integration readiness.
Active or previously held U.S. Department of Defense Secret clearance.

Responsibilities

Serve as a software mission systems engineer for a safety- and mission-critical real-time mission-computing system aligned with A-GRA and AMS-GRA principles, profiles, interfaces, and data standards.
Define and maintain end-to-end software architecture, including mission applications, platform services, middleware, operating-system interfaces, hardware-abstraction layers, networking, data distribution, component boundaries, and APIs.
Architect for deterministic real-time performance, addressing scheduling, latency, jitter, synchronization, throughput, resource utilization, distributed processing, and CPU/GPU/accelerator allocation.
Develop architecture views, interface definitions, data-flow and deployment models, sequence and timing diagrams, resource budgets, trade studies, and technical decision records.
Integrate sensors, effectors, communications, navigation, autonomy, mission management, command-and-control, data-processing, and vehicle services with cross-functional engineering teams.
Design for mission resilience and assurance through fault detection and isolation, redundancy, graceful degradation, recovery, health monitoring, cybersecurity, airworthiness, certification, and requirements traceability.
Establish engineering practices for concurrency, synchronization, memory and resource management, deterministic execution, interface control, configuration management, and predictable component integration.
Define and execute verification strategies across HIL/SIL laboratories, simulations, test benches, flight-test environments, and deployed systems, including automated, performance, stress, fault-injection, interface, and timing tests.
Maintain technical ownership through the system lifecycle by evaluating enabling technologies and supplier designs, analyzing performance, managing technical debt and modernization roadmaps, promoting reuse, and communicating architectural decisions.