Autonomy Software Engineer

This position on the Autonomy team in the UK will lead the delivery of autonomous behaviors into Shield AI's products, acting as technical leads, senior individual contributors, and/or as team leads that are also hands-on contributors.

You will develop tactical autonomy software to enable unmanned platforms to perform complex missions across air, land, sea, and space domains with minimal human supervision.

Key responsibilities include:

• Implementing and testing behaviors that enable multi-agent coordination, target engagement, reconnaissance, and survivability in contested scenarios
• Working throughout the entire software development lifecycle, from requirements capture through design, implementation, verification, and validation
• Championing a product-line mindset in technology road-mapping and enabling reuse of behaviors across multiple projects and portfolios
• Architecting behaviors as scalable software subsystems that interact with various system components
• Collaborating with external teams to align on interfacing requirements between diverse systems
• Acting as a subject matter expert for software engineering, representing software equities in a multi-stakeholder environment
• Traveling to co-locate with end-users and/or other teams up to 20% of the time

The successful candidate will have:

• A BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field
• Proficiency in production-level C++ software development
• 7+ years' experience in 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
• Eligibility to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Secret security clearance

Preferred qualifications include:

• 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 with FOSS software commonly used in robotic systems (e.g., ROS, OMPL, optimization solvers)
• Familiarity with practical aspects of navigation and communications systems
• Experience across the product delivery lifecycle, from emerging opportunity through system acceptance, deployment, and sustainment