Description
Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems.
The Autonomy Capabilities Team develops functionality to automate single- and multi-agent teams of platforms in pursuit of mission objectives and acts as a central discipline-aligned focal-point for encouraging consistent usage of technical approaches across business portfolios.
As a Senior Software Engineer, you'll build and own autonomy behaviors that directly power our products, taking responsibility for key components from design through deployment. You'll work across teams to turn complex mission needs into reliable, scalable software, balancing near-term delivery with long-term maintainability and performance.
What You'll Do:
- Multi-Objective Optimization – Use advanced optimization strategies to perform large-scale distributed decision making, task allocation, and resource scheduling in multi-satellite coordinated missions
- Weapons Target Assignment – Employ cutting edge approaches for weapons target assignment and motion planning for fleets of space vehicles and interceptors that have critical roles in our national defense
- Advance the State of the Art – Pioneer advanced topics in low-SWaP optimal control, tactical behavior management in cooperative and adversarial contexts, and information-aware planning
- Rigorous Software Development – Develop high-performance software modules that are well-tested, have clear interfaces and span-of-control, and are ready for mid-to-high Technology Readiness Level (TRL) insertions
- Cross-Functional Collaboration – Collaborate with cross-functional teams including perception, planning, simulation, hardware, and flight test to ensure seamless integration of autonomy solutions on real-world platforms
- Deployment & Test Support – Deploy autonomy capabilities to real space vehicles, supporting analysis of mission logs to verify software performance and validate system operational effect
- R&D and Road-mapping – Contribute to autonomy roadmaps by researching and prototyping new algorithms, identifying tactical capability gaps, and proposing novel solutions that advance Shield AI’s mission
Required Qualifications:
- Proficiency in programming languages such as C++ and Python, and familiarity with real-time operating systems (RTOS)
- Significant background in one or several robotic technology areas related to control systems, motion planning, optimization, tactical behaviors, and/or distributed decision-making
- Significant experience with unmanned system technologies and accompanying algorithms (ideally in the space domain specifically)
- Experience with simulation tools and environments (e.g., AFSIM, NGTS, or similar) for testing and validation
- Strong problem-solving skills, with the ability to troubleshoot and optimize system performance
- Excellent communication and teamwork skills, with the ability to work effectively in a collaborative, multidisciplinary environment
- Ability to obtain a SECRET clearance or higher