Senior Software Engineer, Autonomous Pilot Integration – Emerging Domains (r5423)

Shield AI Shield AI · Defense · Washington, DC +3 · Flight System Integration

Develop and integrate autonomy capabilities for new platforms and mission profiles in emerging domains (space, maritime, contested logistics), taking systems from initial R&D to live testing. This role involves hands-on engineering across diverse platforms and solving ambiguous technical problems.

What you'd actually do

  1. develop and integrate autonomy capabilities across a variety of emerging-domain platforms while helping establish autonomy on systems that often have no existing autonomy baseline
  2. work closely with platform teams, the Autonomy Capabilities, Perception, and GCS teams, feature crews, and customer stakeholders to solve complex integration challenges and deliver mission-ready autonomy software
  3. This is a hands-on role for engineers who enjoy working across diverse platforms, solving ambiguous technical problems, and seeing new capabilities operate in real-world environments.

Skills

Required

  • software engineering
  • autonomy
  • integration
  • robotics
  • multi-agent systems
  • control systems

Nice to have

  • experience with space, maritime, or contested logistics platforms
  • familiarity with Shield AI's existing autonomy solutions
  • experience with software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, and vehicle-in-the-loop testing

Other signals

  • develop and integrate autonomy capabilities
  • establish autonomy on systems that often have no existing autonomy baseline
  • solve complex integration challenges and deliver mission-ready autonomy software