Staff Engineer, Modelling and Simulation (R6248)

Shield AI•San Diego, CA

12h

About The Position

Shield AI’s Hivemind Simulation team provides simulation capabilities that power the AI Factory’s training and evaluation of autonomous AI pilots. The Simulation Platform team builds the framework and foundational infrastructure that lets engineers bring simulators together, scale experiments, and evaluate autonomy before flight. Its work provides a shared, performant, and extensible foundation for simulation applications. As a Staff Software Engineer on the Simulation Platform team, you will shape how autonomous pilots are tested by building and integrating simulators and developing Monte Carlo infrastructure. You will draw on experience building and running real-time aircraft simulations to help teams evaluate autonomy, guidance, navigation, and control (GNC), and runtime assurance (RTA) systems at scale. This is an individual-contributor role that includes driving technical direction and mentoring engineers.

Requirements

Typically requires at least 10 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree, 9 years with a Master’s degree, 7 years with a PhD, or equivalent work experience.
Strong proficiency in C++, with demonstrated experience designing, implementing, and maintaining production performance-critical software.
Demonstrated experience building and running multithreaded or multiprocess real-time simulations involving aircraft dynamics.
Experience both developing Monte Carlo infrastructure and using it to design, execute, and analyze simulation campaigns.
Demonstrated ability to drive technical decisions, mentor engineers, and collaborate across software and domain engineering teams.
Experience developing software or simulations under a defined verification and validation (V&V) lifecycle.

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting airworthiness certification efforts, including developing simulation evidence for verification, validation, and safety assessment (e.g., DO-178C or MIL-HDBK-516C).
Strong Python skills for simulation tooling, experiment automation, and analysis.
Experience with distributed simulation and model interoperability standards such as HLA, DIS, and FMI/FMU.
Experience with industry-standard simulation tools such as JSBSim, FlightGear, X-Plane, Gazebo, Isaac Sim, or Simulink, or equivalent environments.
Experience with closed-loop autonomy simulation, including sensor inputs and interfaces between autonomy and the simulated environment.
Experience with uncertainty modeling, statistical analysis, and scenario coverage for Monte Carlo evaluation.
Experience testing or operating safety-critical software (e.g., DO-178C).

Responsibilities

Grow the simulation framework’s ecosystem by integrating existing simulators and established standards, and build new simulators where needs are identified.
Build reusable Monte Carlo infrastructure for parameterization, execution, reproducibility, and collection of results across large simulation campaigns.
Develop multithreaded and multiprocess simulation capabilities, addressing synchronization, timing, state exchange, and performance.
Partner with autonomy, GNC, and RTA engineers, as well as field operators, to translate evaluation needs into simulation interfaces and infrastructure.
Support platform-specific performance validation using physics models such as 6DoF and 3DoF.
Set technical direction, lead design reviews, and mentor engineers in simulation architecture and production software development.