8 hours ago
Base Salary
$200k - $300k/yr
Responsibilities
- Research, design, and implement autonomous trajectory planning and control algorithms for single- and multi-agent systems.
- Build, test, debug, and maintain modern C++ autonomy software, using Python for prototyping, analysis, automation, and testing.
- Develop motion-planning capabilities for dynamically feasible behavior, distributed multi-agent planning, and varied motion and dynamics models.
- Diagnose concurrency, performance, integration, and algorithmic software failures.
- Develop analysis tools and validate planning performance through software-, hardware-, and vehicle-in-the-loop simulation and real hardware testing.
- Collaborate across teams to refine requirements, design scalable autonomy architecture, and deliver operational capabilities from ideation through flight testing and maturation.
- Mentor and provide technical guidance to junior engineers.
- Apply robotics, VLM, and VLA advances to safety-critical autonomous systems.
Requirements
- A master's degree in computer science, robotics, or a related field with 5+ years of relevant professional experience, or a PhD with 4+ years of relevant experience.
- Demonstrated experience building, testing, and debugging nontrivial C++ software for motion planning, robotics, autonomous systems, or a closely related algorithmic domain through professional work, internships, research, or substantial projects.
- Experience with modern C++, concurrency patterns, and diagnosing data races, deadlocks, and lifetime errors.
- Working experience with Python for prototyping, analysis, automation, or testing.
- Strong software engineering fundamentals including algorithms, data structures, testing, debugging, version control, CI/CD, and maintainable software design.
- Practical experience developing and debugging software on Linux.
- Ability to communicate technical decisions and collaborate effectively across disciplines.
- Preferred qualifications include motion planning, decentralized or distributed multi-agent planning, trajectory optimization, VLM/VLA applications, fielded or safety-critical autonomous systems, simulation, performance profiling, distributed systems, applied research, publications, open-source contributions, or robotics competitions.
Benefits
- Full-time employees receive bonus, benefits, and equity in addition to pay within the listed range.
- Offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check.
- Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits.
About Shield AI
Shield AI builds autonomous systems for military and national security customers, combining its Hivemind autonomy software with V-BAT and X-BAT unmanned aircraft and Aechelon simulation technologies. The privately held company sells hardware, software, and related services to U.S. and allied defense agencies. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in San Diego, it operates across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, and its technology is used in operational deployments.