Staff Autonomy Engineer-Behavior and Motion Planning

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 Pilot team develops the algorithms and production software that enable intelligent systems to decide what to do and how to do it in uncertain, dynamic environments. Our work spans mission and task planning, motion planning, effects and action planning, and learned planning approaches. Depending on the team, you may work at the intersection of artificial intelligence, robotics, optimization, and real-time autonomous systems. 

As a member of Behavior and Motion planning team, you will leverage your expertise in robotics to develop, deploy, and optimize path planning algorithms for autonomous systems that operate in complex, real-world environments. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver robust, scalable solutions that advance the state of Hivemind SDK. You will also contribute to developing technical requirements, test plans, and validating the performance of algorithms. 

We are hiring software engineers across multiple experience levels. The scope of the role will be calibrated to the candidate's experience, from implementing and validating well-defined planning components to owning major technical capabilities, shaping architecture and roadmaps, and mentoring other engineers.

What you'll do:

  - Research, design, and implement state-of-the-art algorithms for autonomous trajectory planning
    and control for single and multi-agent systems.
  - Build reliable, robust, and maintainable software, primarily in modern C++, with Python used for
    prototyping, analysis, automation, and testing.
  - Develop comprehensive tests and evaluate planning stack performance in simulation and, where
    applicable, on real hardware.
  - Diagnose complex algorithmic and software failures, including concurrency, performance, and
    integration issues.
  - Collaborate with teams across the organization to refine requirements and deliver capabilities
    that meet operational needs.\
  - Contribute to the design and architecture of scalable, maintainable autonomy and software
    architecture.
  - Take new product features from ideation to verification, to flight testing, and all the way to
    maturation.
  - Mentor and provide technical guidance to junior engineers.
  - Stay current with the latest advancements in robotics, and apply them to solve challenging
    problems.

Projects you might work on:

•   - Motion planning that produces safe, dynamically feasible behavior under real-world constraints.
    - Collaborative and distributed motion planning for multi-agent scenarios.
    - Effects and action planning that connects mission intent to executable autonomous behaviors.
    - Incorporating various types of motion and dynamics models into the planning stack.
    - Write software that allows the customer to interact with payloads safely.
    - Planning approaches that incorporate vision-language models (VLMs), vision-language-action models
      (VLAs), or other learned components.
    - Validate the planning stack using software-, hardware-, and vehicle-in-the-loop simulation of
      complex autonomous missions.

Required qualifications:

  - Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, applied mathematics, operations research, or
    a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
  - Demonstrated experience through professional work, internships, research, or substantial projects
    building, testing, and debugging nontrivial C++ software for optimization, motion planning,
    robotics, autonomous systems, or a closely related algorithmic domain.
  - Experience writing and debugging modern C++, including safe use of common concurrency patterns
    and the ability to diagnose issues such as 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.
  - For senior-level candidates: Master's degree in computer science, Robotics, or a related field
    and 5+ years of relevant professional experience or PhD with 4+ years of relevant experience.

Ways to stand out:

•   - Experience with behavior/motion planning for any platform (aerial, maritime, space, or ground),
      working on decentralized or distributed planning for multi-agent systems, or trajectory
      optimization.
    - Experience working on multi-objective optimization problems.
    - Experience using solvers such as Gurobi, OR-Tools, or CPLEX.
    - Experience applying VLMs or VLAs to motion planning, reasoning, tool use, or autonomous decision-
      making in safety critical systems.
    - Experience delivering software for fielded, real-time, safety-critical, or resource-constrained
      autonomous systems.
    - Experience with software-in-the-loop or hardware-in-the-loop simulation, performance profiling,
      or distributed systems.
    - Evidence of relevant technical depth through fielded systems, applied research, publications,
      open-source contributions, or robotics and autonomy competitions.

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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.