Senior Engineer, Full-Stack, Frontend Focus - Forge Applications
Shield AI· Defense tech· Oct 9, 2026 · 19d ago
San Diego, California
In office
Full-time
Senior
$130K–$240K
Job description
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 .
About Shield AI
Shield AI is a defense technology company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. We build autonomy systems for air, maritime, space, and other platforms operating in complex and contested environments.
Forge is the engineering platform used to build, integrate, test, and operate Hivemind capabilities. It connects autonomy developers with the applications, services, compute, data, and workflows they need to move from local development to deployed systems.
The Role
We are looking for a full-stack engineer with strong frontend expertise who enjoys building customer-facing products, developer tools, and AI-assisted workflows. Your primary focus will be designing and building intuitive, responsive applications in TypeScript and React, with backend development and service integration as needed to deliver complete workflows.
You will partner with internal subject-matter experts to build Forge applications for simulation, synthetic data generation, test and evaluation, and autonomy performance. You will use shared platform components and design application extension points that let downstream teams specialize these workflows.
Shield AI’s internal Hivemind Pilot developers and Hivemind Solutions groups are your primary design partners. You will work directly with them to understand requirements, evaluate solutions, and improve the user experience through real use.
Your work will help engineers understand complex systems, accelerate the development of autonomy software, and deliver reliable systems faster.
What you'll do:
Design and build frontend experiences in TypeScript and React for autonomy development workflows such as simulation, synthetic data generation, and test and evaluation.
Translate complex technical workflows into intuitive apps and workflows.
Partner with Hivemind Pilot developers, Hivemind Solutions teams, product, and design to understand user needs and improve applications through feedback.
Use Forge’s UI Platform to deliver consistent application experiences and drive improvements through collaborating on concrete requirements.
Integrate domain APIs and services, building or extending backend capabilities as needed to complete application workflows.
Design reusable application components and extension points that let other teams specialize workflows.
Key outcomes:
A successful engineer in this role will help deliver the following outcomes:
Hivemind teams adopt Forge applications that make it easier to develop, integrate, test, and diagnose autonomy capabilities.
Engineers can complete workflows across domain services through coherent application experiences, with clear progress, results, and paths to investigate failures.
Applications behave reliably across supported local, cluster, edge, and air-gapped environments.
Other teams can extend and specialize application workflows through documented APIs and extension points.
Engineers and AI agents can use application capabilities with appropriate permissions, visibility, and user control.
Required qualifications:
Experience delivering and supporting production web applications, with substantial ownership of frontend architecture and user experience.
Strong proficiency with TypeScript and React, including component design, state management, asynchronous data handling, routing, auth, and web architecture.
Ability to translate complex technical workflows into intuitive interfaces in collaboration with users, subject-matter experts, and designers.
Experience building responsive, accessible interfaces and diagnosing frontend performance issues with profiling.
Experience integrating APIs and handling loading states, errors, long-running operations, and evolving service contracts.
Ability to work across the stack, including reading, debugging, and extending backend services in Go, Python, or a comparable language.
Experience testing UI components, application behavior, and complete user workflows.
Sound judgment about when to use shared platform capabilities, contribute reusable improvements, or keep a solution specific to an application.
Clear communication skills and the ability to collaborate across product, design, platform, and domain teams.
Preferred qualifications:
Experience in every area below is not expected. Relevant experience may include:
Developer tools or technical applications for simulation, experimentation, test and evaluation, or deployment.
Complex interactive interfaces such as scientific visualizations, workflow editors, large data tables, or live telemetry displays.
Frontend performance optimization for large datasets, frequent updates, or computationally intensive views.
Applications built on extensible platforms, including plugin systems, micro-frontends, Web Components, or VS Code extensions.
Schema-driven API development using OpenAPI, JSON Schema, Protocol Buffers, or generated clients.
Service and device integration using REST, gRPC, WebSockets, MQTT, DDS, MAVLink, or patterns such as pub/sub messaging and streaming telemetry.
AI-assisted application workflows and agent-tool integrations using protocols such as Model Context Protocol.
Familiarity with robotics, autonomy, simulation, or embedded systems, particularly integrating with underlying services, platforms, or devices.
Why join us:
Connect your work directly to the mission. The applications you build help engineers develop, validate, and deliver autonomy software at scale.
Own the experience engineers use every day. Shape how users interact with complex autonomy systems, with primary ownership of frontend development and the ability to carry improvements through backend integration.
Influence the platform through real applications. Turn workflow needs into shared workflow capabilities that benefit the broader Hivemind ecosystem.
Build alongside engaged users. Partner directly with AI/ML/sim domain experts, learn how they work, and see the effect of your decisions.
Shape AI-assisted engineering workflows. Build applications where engineers and agents can work with shared context and tools while preserving user control and accountability.
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Full-time regular employee offer package:
Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity
Temporary employee offer package:
Pay within range listed above + temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)
Salary compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, licenses and certifications, and specific work location. All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check. Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits. Please speak to your talent acquisition representative for more information.
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Shield AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.
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