Staff Engineer, Modeling & Simulation (R4869)

Shield AI•San Diego, CA

About The Position

The Aircraft Simulation team turns frontier autonomy into mission-ready aircraft. We own the commit-to-flight pipeline—deterministic aircraft and mission simulation, HITL/SITL integration, CI/CD, and tooling for automated flight qualification testing. Our goal is simple: make AI fly—safely, reliably, and fast. As a Staff Modeling & Simulation Engineer, you will be dedicated to Shield AI’s next-generation aircraft program, contributing to our emergent modeling & simulation tooling. You’ll design, build, and scale novel aircraft subsystem models, develop infrastructure that enables robust automated testing for our next generation XBAT product line, and conduct system performance analysis.

Requirements

BS or MS in Computer Science, Aerospace, Robotics, or related field.
7+ years of experience in simulation software development, with emphasis on modern C++ (C++17 or later) and performance optimization.
Strong understanding of rigid-body dynamics, kinematics, aerodynamics, and sensor mechanics.
Proven experience developing or integrating simulation systems for robotics, aerospace, and/or autonomous systems.
Ability to debug complex build and runtime environments (CMake, package management, logging, and profiling tools).
Experience with software testing tools (GTest, etc.)
Experience with simulation V&V.
Strong collaboration and communication skills across software, hardware, and systems disciplines.

Nice To Haves

Grasp of real-time and deterministic software design, including multi-threading, synchronization, and memory management.
Experience with DevOps-integrated simulation workflows, including CI/CD and automated hardware testing environments.
Working knowledge of Python for data analysis, test automation, or simulation orchestration.
Familiarity with aircraft and flight physics modeling.

Responsibilities

Develop models and infrastructure for the integrated simulation pipeline in C++.
Design deterministic, high-performance simulation tools capable of faster-than-real-time execution for development, testing, and release.
Implement test scenarios and write unit, system, and regression tests.
Collaborate across autonomy, embedded, GNC, and test engineering to ensure the simulation mirrors real aircraft behavior and mission scenarios.
Contribute to platform-agnostic simulation tooling to accelerate current and future aircraft design and development efforts.
Perform verification and validation (V&V) analysis activities on modeling tools.
Conduct system performance analysis and generate reports and visualizations.
Utilize best practices in C++, simulation architecture, and performance engineering.