Principal Engineer, Edge Applications & Mission Systems
Shield AI· Defense tech· Oct 17, 2026 · 11d ago
San Diego, California
In office
Full-time
Principal
$220K–$330K
15+ years exp
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 .
Job Description:
The Lead Edge Applications and Mission System is responsible to drive the technical direction, architecture, and delivery of our edge application platform for autonomous systems. This platform connects operators, autonomous platforms, mission data, and external command-and-control systems, supporting applications ranging from single-vehicle ground control to coordinated fleet operations and theater-level mission planning and execution.
You will shape a platform that customers and partners can readily integrate, extend, and adapt to new missions. The scope includes ground control stations (GCS), command and control (C2), integration with battle-management systems (BMS), fleet and configuration management, and agentic workflows that help operators plan, supervise, and manage autonomous robotic systems.
As the technical lead, you will combine deep defense-domain knowledge with strong software engineering judgment and a record of shipping operational products. You will remain directly involved in architecture, critical implementation work, and technical problem-solving while aligning engineering teams, product leaders, customers, and other stakeholders around a clear technical roadmap.
What you'll do:
Own the platform architecture. Define and evolve the architecture across operator applications, backend services, mission data, integration interfaces, and edge deployment environments. Establish boundaries that allow teams to deliver capabilities independently while maintaining a coherent product.
Enable the full range of mission applications. Guide the evolution from single-vehicle GCS workflows to multi-vehicle supervision, heterogeneous fleet operations, and applications supporting theater-level planning, execution monitoring, and battlespace management.
Make customer extensibility a core capability. Establish APIs, SDKs, shared data models, extension mechanisms, and integration tooling that help customers and partners add platforms, data sources, applications, and workflows quickly. Preserve compatibility as the platform evolves.
Lead C2 and BMS interoperability. Guide integration with external mission systems and comparable defense C2 environments. Enable the aggregation and exchange of vehicle state, mission information, sensor-derived data, and operational context.
Advance operator and agentic workflows. Partner with autonomy, AI, product, and design teams to deliver intuitive planning, supervision, execution, and debrief experiences. Define clear operator authority, approval boundaries, observability, and evaluation criteria for AI-assisted workflows.
Own fleet and configuration architecture. Establish capabilities for asset inventory, readiness and health monitoring, software and configuration versioning, compatibility management, controlled updates, rollback, and traceability across deployed autonomous systems.
Engineer for edge applications in contested environment. Design for intermittent connectivity, constrained bandwidth and compute, distributed state, and recovery from partial failures. Ensure useful and predictable behavior in disconnected and degraded environments.
Drive the technical roadmap and execution. Translate product strategy, customer needs, and operational feedback into architectural priorities, milestones, and measurable deliverables. Resolve dependencies and make explicit tradeoffs among near-term delivery, platform investment, reliability, and technical debt.
Lead products through customer deployment. Partner with integration, test, field, and customer teams from initial requirements through acceptance, deployment, and sustainment. Use field experience, telemetry, and customer feedback to improve subsequent releases.
Required qualifications:
15+ years of professional software engineering experience, or an equivalent record of technical depth and impact, including substantial responsibility for complex production systems.
5+ years providing technical leadership as a technical lead, architect, Principal Engineer, or equivalent, with demonstrated influence across multiple teams and ownership of significant architectural decisions.
Deep experience developing defense GCS and C2 applications, with working knowledge of mission planning, mission execution, operator workflows, and integration with broader battle-management environments.
A demonstrated record of shipping and sustaining software products for defense customers, including responsibility for operational deployment, customer acceptance, and improvements informed by field use.
Strong software architecture and implementation skills across distributed systems, application services, APIs, data management, and operator-facing software.
Experience building extensible platforms used by multiple teams and external customers, including interface design, reusable capabilities, versioning, and integration across organizational boundaries.
Experience with autonomous robotics applications, including fleet operations, configuration management, telemetry, and interactions between ground applications and platform-side autonomy.
Strong understanding of networked systems and edge deployments, including performance, reliability, security, and behavior under limited or interrupted connectivity.
Demonstrated ability to translate ambiguous customer and stakeholder needs into technical roadmaps, executable plans, and delivered capabilities; excellent written and verbal communication.
Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Robotics, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
Preferred qualifications:
Direct experience developing or integrating platforms such as Lattice, other extensible defense C2/BMS products, or comparable mission-management systems.
Experience with multi-domain operations, heterogeneous autonomous fleets, and the relationship between tactical GCS applications and higher-echelon mission systems.
Experience delivering agentic or AI-assisted applications, including workflow orchestration, human-machine teaming, evaluation, and operator supervision.
Experience with geospatial applications, common operational pictures, mission rehearsal, telemetry replay, or post-mission analysis.
Experience with secure software delivery into defense environments, including collaboration with cybersecurity and authorization teams.
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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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