Staff Engineer, Autonomy Software Integration
Shield AI· Defense tech· Jan 31, 2026 · 9mo agoPosted 269 days ago
San Diego, California
Hybrid
Full-time
Staff
$157K–$236K
7+ years exp
Before you apply
Ghost Signal:
Open since January 31, 2026 — 269 days, and still accepting applications.
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:
Are you a passionate and innovative engineer looking to help develop state-of-the-art AI and robotics products? Are you eager to make a positive difference in the world? Do you want to work alongside mission-driven and values-focused teammates? Shield AI is just the place for you!
The Hivemind Quality team is committed to ensuring our autonomy platform delivers a seamless developer experience and enables customers to build world-class autonomous systems. We focus on integrating, validating, and continuously improving the Hivemind ecosystem—spanning autonomy behaviors, sensor processing, multi-agent coordination, ground-control systems, and embedded platforms. Our mission is to ensure that autonomy developers can efficiently build, test, and deploy autonomous applications that meet real-world mission objectives.
We are seeking an experienced Software Integration Engineer passionate about autonomy development. In this role, you will become a power user of the Hivemind SDK, deeply understanding its capabilities and identifying gaps from a customer perspective. You will develop and validate customer use cases, evaluate the ease of use for autonomy developers, and provide actionable feedback to Engineering and Product teams. You will play a critical role in integrating new autonomy capabilities into the platform, assessing feature completeness, and anticipating novel customer workflows and edge cases. This position bridges the gap between engineering development and real-world autonomy applications—ensuring our platform empowers customers to build reliable, mission-ready autonomous systems.
What you'll do:
Become a systems integration expert for autonomous robotics: Develop deep expertise in our AI-powered autonomy stack.
Learn to configure, deploy, and integrate multi-agent systems across simulation, hardware-in-the-loop, and flight platforms.
Understand the full system end-to-end—from sensor inputs to autonomous behaviors.
Integrate new capabilities into the autonomy stack: Collaborate cross-functionally with development teams to bring autonomy algorithms, perception pipelines, middleware, and platform interfaces into the integrated product. Ensure seamless interoperability between components.
Enable platform bring-up and validation: Lead the integration of autonomy software onto new robotic hardware platforms.
Configure sensor drivers, communication interfaces, and platform adapters to enable full autonomy stack functionality on prototype and production vehicles.
Develop integration tooling & infrastructure: Architect and implement integration frameworks, deployment scripts, and configuration management tools that streamline bringing new capabilities into Software-in-the-Loop (SIL), Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL), and flight environments.
Support cross-platform compatibility: Work with other integration engineers to ensure the autonomy stack operates reliably across all supported platforms, operating systems, and deployment configurations. Identify and resolve integration issues across system boundaries.
Analyze system behavior and root-cause issues: Evaluate system logs, telemetry, and rosbag data to diagnose integration defects. Collaborate with developers to isolate issues to specific subsystems and drive resolution. Create analysis tooling to accelerate debugging.
Optimize integration workflows and CI/CD: Partner with DevOps teams to streamline integration pipelines, reduce build-to-deploy cycle times, and ensure robust continuous integration of new features. Define integration checkpoints and criteria for release readiness.
Validate system requirements and interface contracts: Work with engineers to ensure integrated capabilities meet product requirements and interface specifications. Assist in developing tooling to verify end-to-end system compliance and traceability.
Required qualifications:
Typically requires a minimum of 7 years of related experience with a bachelor’s degree in CS, Comp Eng, Robotics, or a related field; or 6 years and a master’s degree; or 4 years with a PhD.
Proficiency in programming languages including Python or C++.
Experience with autonomous systems or server applications or middleware.
Demonstrated experience designing integration workflows, communicating system dependencies, and triaging and reporting integration defects across subsystem boundaries.
Proficiency with simulation tools and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing environments.
Strong expertise with CI/CD pipelines.
Strong problem-solving skills and a proven track record of delivering high-quality software solutions.
Excellent communication skills, capable of collaborating effectively across various teams and presenting to customers or technical leadership.
Preferred qualifications:
Demonstrated experience building complex systems with a strong understanding of software architecture and design principles.
Experience with hardware or embedded systems.
Expert knowledge of Python.
Experience with ROS.
Experience with white box testing
Familiarity with networking, operating-systems, and radio communications.
Experience designing automated tooling for testing for GUI applications.
Experience designing automated tooling for testing server applications.
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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.
Application prep
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