Shield AI
Staff Engineer, Autonomy and Motion Planning (R5263)
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Autonomous Software Engineering Lead
Shield AI
Founded in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT, and X-BAT aircraft. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, Shield AI’s technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more details, visit www.shield.ai.
About the Role
This position on the Autonomy team in the UK requires a senior-level technical lead, senior individual contributor, and/or team lead who will champion the delivery of autonomous behaviors into Shield AI’s products. The ideal candidate is an end-to-end owner, driving safe and mission-effective autonomy software through concept, design, implementation, validation, and beyond.
Key Responsibilities
- Develop tactical autonomy software for unmanned platforms to execute complex missions across air, land, sea, and space domains with minimal human supervision.
- Design, implement, and validate multi-agent coordination algorithms, including target engagement, reconnaissance, and survivability behaviours for contested environments.
- Guide the entire software development lifecycle—from requirements capture to verification and validation—ensuring adherence to collaborative, high-quality engineering practices.
- Champion a product-line mindset by drafting technology roadmaps and reusing behaviors across multidisciplinary projects and portfolios.
- Architect scalable autonomy subsystems capable of interfacing with sensor processing, state estimation, peer-to-peer communications, control systems, and payload integration.
- Collaborate with internally and externally-located engineering teams to rapidly deliver capabilities to platforms, ensuring architectural evolution and dependency sustainment.
- Align with multistakeholder teams (engineering, sales, vehicle integration experts) as a subject matter expert (SME) for software systems engineering.
- Travel (up to 20%) to co-locate with stakeholders for hands-on system validation and collaborative debugging.
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Requirements
Requirements
- Education: BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field.
- Proficiency: Production-grade C++ development experience.
- Industry Experience:
- 7+ years in software subsystem integration, behavior planning, task allocation, motion planning, optimization, or flight control systems.
- Hands-on experience with collaborative tools (version control, issue tracking, code reviews, and release management).
- Leadership: Proven ability to:
- Lead cross-disciplinary teams.
- Set technical direction and manage end-to-end project lifecycles.
- Technical Ownership: Capacity to be the sole technical proprietor of systems, covering stakeholder engagement, requirements, roadmaps, design, implementation, validation, and maintenance.
- Security: Eligibility and ability to obtain/maintain a US DoD Secret security clearance.
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Preferred Qualifications
Experience with:
- Multiple technology readiness levels (TRLs), demonstrating bridging of research concepts to operational applications.
- Mission system integration, including integration events and flight demonstrations.
- Hadronic environments like collaborative mission planning, team coordination, autonomous red/blue force tactics, or kinematic motion planning across global domains (e.g. air, maritime, ground).
- Specialized designs in fusion systems planning, target assignment & control laws, safety mechanisms (e.g. collision avoidance).
- Familiarity with FOSS robotic software (e.g., ROS, OMPL, numeric solvers), simulation tools (AFSIM, NGTS), and navigation/comms systems.
- Full cycle from emerging opportunities through system acceptance, deployment, and sustainment.
- High-assurance processes (e.g. DO-178C or MIL-STD equivalents).
Your Rewards & Environment
Shield AI offers a comprehensive compensation and benefits package aligned with locally competitive terms in the employed country office. For detailed information, liaise with the talent acquisition team.
Your future security starts here. Join us as we redefine mission-capable autonomy for the 21st-century defence domain.
#LD
Applicants are welcome to submit AI-written materials. Shield AI reserves the right to flag inconsistencies or inconsistencies in candidate credentials as part of standard hiring verification procedures. For data confidentiality inquiry, contact talent.acquisition@shield.ai.
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