Staff Engineer, Autonomy Software Integration (R4483)

f7d8749a-72d6-407c-bf98-292ea630c73a•San Diego, CA

About The Position

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-technology company whose mission is to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. The Hivemind Quality team works to provide a seamless developer experience and help customers build autonomous systems. It integrates, validates, and improves the Hivemind ecosystem, including autonomy behaviors, sensor processing, multi-agent coordination, ground-control systems, and embedded platforms. The Staff Engineer, Autonomy Software Integration will develop expertise in the Hivemind SDK and autonomy stack, evaluate customer use cases and developer workflows, and provide actionable feedback to Engineering and Product teams. The role integrates and validates autonomy capabilities across simulation, hardware-in-the-loop, and flight environments, helping ensure the platform supports reliable, mission-ready autonomous systems.

Requirements

Typically, at least 7 years of related experience with a bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering, robotics, or a related field; or 6 years with a master's degree; or 4 years with a Ph.D.
Proficiency in Python or C++.
Experience with autonomous systems, server applications, or middleware.
Demonstrated experience designing integration workflows, communicating system dependencies, and triaging and reporting integration defects across subsystem boundaries.
Proficiency with simulation tools and hardware-in-the-loop testing environments.
Strong expertise with CI/CD pipelines.
Strong problem-solving skills and a track record of delivering high-quality software solutions.
Excellent communication skills, including the ability to collaborate across teams and present to customers or technical leadership.

Nice To Haves

Experience building complex systems and a strong understanding of software architecture and design principles.
Experience with hardware or embedded systems.
Expert knowledge of Python.
Experience with ROS.
Experience with white-box testing.
Familiarity with networking, operating systems, and radio communications.
Experience designing automated testing tools for GUI applications.
Experience designing automated testing tools for server applications.

Responsibilities

Develop expertise in the AI-powered autonomy stack and configure, deploy, and integrate multi-agent systems across simulation, hardware-in-the-loop, and flight platforms.
Understand the system end-to-end, from sensor inputs through autonomous behaviors.
Collaborate with development teams to integrate autonomy algorithms, perception pipelines, middleware, and platform interfaces, ensuring interoperability between components.
Lead integration of autonomy software onto new robotic hardware platforms, including configuration of sensor drivers, communication interfaces, and platform adapters.
Design and implement integration frameworks, deployment scripts, and configuration-management tools for Software-in-the-Loop, Hardware-in-the-Loop, and flight environments.
Work with integration engineers to ensure reliability across supported platforms, operating systems, and deployment configurations, and resolve issues across system boundaries.
Analyze logs, telemetry, and rosbag data to diagnose integration defects, isolate issues to subsystems, and drive resolution with developers.
Create analysis tools that accelerate debugging.
Partner with DevOps teams to improve integration pipelines, reduce build-to-deploy cycle times, and support continuous integration of new features.
Define integration checkpoints and release-readiness criteria.
Help ensure integrated capabilities meet product requirements and interface specifications, and develop tools to verify end-to-end compliance and traceability.
Develop and validate customer use cases, assess ease of use for autonomy developers, and provide feedback to Engineering and Product teams.