Staff Engineer, Autonomy and Motion Planning (R5263)

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, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. 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 information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube.

Job Description:

This position on the Autonomy team in the UK will lead the delivery of autonomous behaviors into our products, acting as technical leads, senior individual contributors, and/or as team leads that are also hands-on contributors. We expect candidates to demonstrate unparalleled end-to-end outcome ownership, driving the architecting, design, delivery, support, and evolution of safe and effective mission autonomy software throughout the entire product lifecycle.

What you'll do:

• Develop tactical autonomy software to enable unmanned platforms to perform complex missions across air, land, sea, and space domains with minimal human supervision
• Implement and test behaviors that enable multi-agent coordination, target engagement, reconnaissance, and survivability in contested scenarios
• Work throughout the entire of the software development lifecycle, from requirements capture through design, implementation, verification, and validation, utilizing tools and workflows consistent with collaborative high-quality software development
• Champion a product-line mindset in technology road-mapping and to enable reuse of behaviors across multiple projects and portfolios
• Utilize your software and systems expertise to architect behaviors as scalable software subsystems, that may interact directly or indirectly with a breadth of system components (e.g., sensor processing, state estimation, peer-to-peer communications, contingency management, actuation, and payload interfacing)
• Leverage internal product and program-specific engineering teams to rapidly deliver state-of-the-art capabilities to vehicle platforms (whether internally and externally owned), with a clear path towards architecture and capability evolution over time
• Collaborate with external teams, aligning on interfacing requirements between diverse systems, often working closely with vehicle integration teams and associated operational subject matter experts (e.g., fighter pilots, UAV operators, etc.)
• Act as a subject matter expert for software engineering, representing software equities in a multi-stakeholder environment including engineering, business and sales leadership.
• Travel to co-locate with end-users and/or other teams up to 20% of the time

Required qualifications:

• BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field
• Proficient in production-level C++ software development
• 7+ years' experience in one or more of the following: software sub-system scheduling and integration, behavior planning, task and resource allocation, motion planning, optimization, or flight controls
• Experience with collaborative software development tools for version control, issue tracking, code reviews, and release management
• Proven ability to lead multi-disciplinary teams, set technical direction, and manage full project lifecycles from concept to deployment
• Capacity to learn and grow individually, while mentoring junior team members effectively, building team cohesion and capacity
• Desire to work in a highly collaborative, fast paced, enthusiastic, and mission-centric environment
• Capacity to act as the technical owner for an entire software system, including stakeholder engagement, requirements definition, roadmap management, team co-ordination, design, implementation, sustainment, and evolution

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience across a breadth of technology readiness levels (TRLs) and demonstration of bridging concepts from research-grade to operationally ready
• Experience with mission systems integration, and ideally, hands-on experience supporting integration events and/or flight demonstrations
• Experience across a multitude of application areas, including but not limited to:
• Collaborative mission planning, behavior planning, synchronized teaming
• Automated red force vs blue force tactics
• Motion planning across a variety of vehicle classes, kinematic constraints, and team compositions
• Weapons target assignment, Sensor target pairing, sensor-centric control laws
• Collision avoidance, geofencing, and safety-monitoring
• Experience in more than one operational effect (e.g., strike, air combat, surveillance, reconnaissance, etc.) and more than one associated domain (e.g., air, space, maritime, ground, etc.)
• Experience with FOSS software that is commonly used in robotic systems (e.g., ROS, OMPL, optimization solvers, etc.)
• Experience with simulation tools and environments (e.g., AFSIM, NGTS) for testing and validation
• Familiarity with practical aspects of navigation and communications systems
• Experience across the product delivery lifecycle, from emerging opportunity through system acceptance, deployment, and sustainment
• Familiarity with systems engineering methodologies
• Familiarity with high-assurance software development processes (e.g., DO-178C or equivalent MIL-STD's)

Why join Shield AI:

• Help build the defining defence technology company of this century.
• Work at the forefront of AI, autonomy, and next-generation defence systems.
• Operate in a highly entrepreneurial and mission-driven environment.
• Make a direct impact on international growth and strategic defence partnerships.
• Collaborate with exceptional teams solving some of the world’s most complex operational challenges.

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Our international teammates receive a comprehensive total rewards package aligned to your country office location. For full details on compensation and benefits, please consult your talent acquisition partner.