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Shield AI

Builds autonomous aircraft for defense

Mission Systems Software Engineer

Embedded EngineeringConfirmed live in the last 24 hours
Full-timeIn-person

About the Job

Requirements

  • A bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, with 5+ years of professional software-engineering experience and 1+ years in software architecture, systems architecture, or technical leadership for Senior level.
  • A bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, with 8+ years of professional software-engineering experience and 3+ years in software architecture, systems architecture, or technical leadership for Staff level.
  • A bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, with 10+ years of professional software-engineering experience and 5+ years in software architecture, systems architecture, or technical leadership for Senior Staff level.
  • Experience developing embedded, distributed, real-time, safety-critical, or mission-critical software systems.
  • Proficiency in C, C++, Rust, or another strongly typed systems-programming language.
  • Strong understanding of real-time software principles, including scheduling, concurrency, synchronization, latency, jitter, memory management, and deterministic execution.
  • Experience with embedded operating systems or real-time operating systems, middleware, interprocess communication, networking, and data-distribution technologies.
  • Experience defining software architectures, APIs, interface-control documents, data flows, deployment models, and system resource budgets.
  • Experience integrating software with hardware, sensors, communications systems, navigation systems, effectors, or other mission-system components.
  • Experience supporting software through requirements development, design reviews, implementation, integration, verification, system test, and deployment.
  • Working knowledge of systems-engineering processes, requirements management, traceability, configuration management, and verification and validation.
  • Ability to analyze system performance using instrumentation, telemetry, traces, profiling, network captures, timing data, and resource-utilization measurements.
  • Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Department of Defense security clearance; U.S. citizenship may be required for clearance eligibility.

Responsibilities

  • Serve as a software mission systems engineer for a safety- and mission-critical real-time mission-computing system aligned with A-GRA and AMS-GRA principles, profiles, interfaces, and data standards.
  • Define and maintain the end-to-end software architecture, including mission applications, platform services, middleware, operating-system interfaces, hardware-abstraction layers, networking, data distribution, component boundaries, and APIs.
  • Architect for deterministic real-time performance by addressing scheduling, latency, jitter, synchronization, throughput, resource utilization, distributed processing, and CPU/GPU/accelerator allocation.
  • Develop architecture views, interface definitions, data-flow and deployment models, sequence and timing diagrams, resource budgets, trade studies, and technical decision records.
  • Integrate sensors, effectors, communications, navigation, autonomy, mission management, command-and-control, data-processing, and vehicle services in collaboration with hardware, FPGA, cybersecurity, safety, systems, integration, and test teams.
  • Design for mission resilience and assurance through fault detection and isolation, redundancy, graceful degradation, recovery, health monitoring, cybersecurity, airworthiness, certification, and requirements traceability.
  • Establish engineering practices for concurrency, synchronization, memory and resource management, deterministic execution, interface control, configuration management, and predictable component integration.
  • Define and execute verification strategies across HIL/SIL laboratories, simulations, test benches, flight-test environments, and deployed systems using automated, performance, stress, fault-injection, interface, and timing tests.
  • Maintain technical ownership throughout the system lifecycle by evaluating enabling technologies and supplier designs, analyzing performance, managing technical debt and modernization roadmaps, promoting reuse, and communicating architectural decisions.

Desired Qualifications

  • Experience developing software for autonomous aircraft, unmanned aircraft systems, avionics, mission computers, robotics, or aerospace and defense platforms.
  • Experience with A-GRA, AMS-GRA, OMS, UCI, FACE, or other government reference architectures and open-mission-system standards.
  • Experience integrating autonomy, mission management, command-and-control, sensor processing, communications, navigation, and effector capabilities.
  • Familiarity with airworthiness, safety-assurance, or certification standards such as DO-178C, DO-254, ARP4754A, or applicable military airworthiness guidance.
  • Experience with CPU-, GPU-, FPGA-, or accelerator-based heterogeneous computing architectures.
  • Experience with publish/subscribe middleware, quality-of-service controls, high-rate data distribution, precision timing, and distributed time synchronization.
  • Experience designing cybersecurity controls for embedded or mission systems, including trust boundaries, least privilege, authentication, authorization, secure communications, and software integrity.
  • Experience with HIL/SIL environments, simulation systems, laboratory integration, flight testing, or operational deployment.
  • Experience evaluating supplier designs, real-time operating systems, middleware, computing platforms, or third-party software for architectural compliance and integration readiness.
  • Active or previously held U.S. Department of Defense Secret clearance.

About the Company

Shield AI

Builds autonomous aircraft for defense

Shield AI builds autonomous aircraft and flight software for military and allied defense customers, with a focus on operations where conventional remote control breaks down. Its Hivemind AI pilot handles decisions during a mission, while the V-BAT aircraft gathers intelligence and locates targets. Aircraft makers use its software tools to develop and test their own autonomy, and its Aechelon business supplies visual and sensor simulation for pilot training. The company earns money from aircraft sales, autonomy software and contracted engineering and operational services. Shield AI was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in San Diego, California.

Company size
1,001-5,000
Company stage
Series H
Total funding
$4.8B
Headquarters
San Diego, CA
Founded
2015

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