Software Engineer, Autonomy Behaviors; R4588

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 and 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.

The Autonomy Capabilities team at Shield AI is a diverse group of experts in software, robotics, control systems, optimization, and data analysis. The team develops autonomous behaviors within Shield AI’s industry‑leading mission autonomy software stack and deploys them across a breadth of platforms, including the Anduril Fury, Northrop Grumman Talon, Shield AI V‑Bat, and other first‑ and third‑party autonomous vehicles. We work closely with specialist teams in software integration, hardware, and test engineering to solve some of the hardest problems facing our customers.

Staff Software Engineers on the Autonomy Behaviors team will lead the delivery of autonomous behaviors into our products, serving as technical leaders, extremely senior individual contributors, and/or team leads who remain hands‑on. Staff Engineers are expected to demonstrate end‑to‑end outcome ownership, driving the architecture, design, delivery, support, and evolution of safe and effective mission autonomy software throughout the product lifecycle.

• 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 software development lifecycle, from requirements capture through design, implementation, verification, and validation, using tools and workflows consistent with collaborative high‑quality software development
• Champion a product‑line mindset in technology road‑mapping and enable reuse of behaviors across multiple projects and portfolios
• 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 or externally owned, with a clear path toward 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)
• 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

• 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 subsystem 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 multidisciplinary teams, set technical direction, and manage full project life cycles 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,…