Senior Staff Software Engineer, Autonomous Pilot Integration – Expeditionary (R5193)

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.

What You'll Do:: Technical Strategy & Portfolio Leadership – Define and drive the long-term technical direction for Expeditionary autonomy across V-BAT, X-BAT, and future platforms. Develop & Field Autonomy – Guide development of mission autonomy, payload integration, flight-autonomy interfaces, executive autonomy, and multi-agent capabilities while ensuring successful operational deployment. Aircraft Team Partnership – Establish long-term technical strategy with the Aircraft team for platform integration, interface evolution, and mission readiness. Cross-Engineering Leadership – Influence architecture across the Autonomy Capabilities, Perception, GCS, Strategic Systems (ACP), Aircraft, and customer organizations. Subject Matter Expertise – Serve as the organization's technical expert for complex autonomy integration challenges spanning software, hardware, and operations. Design & Engineering Excellence – Lead architecture reviews, engineering standards, interface definitions, and organization-wide technical improvements. Mentorship & Organizational Growth – Mentor senior engineers, develop technical leaders, contribute to leveling frameworks, and partner on senior hiring. Mission Readiness & Operational Excellence – Guide customer releases, deployment strategy, and mission validation while supporting critical operational events. Continuous Improvement – Drive long-term improvements to engineering processes, integration workflows, testing infrastructure, and developer experience. C2 Interoperability & Open Systems – Define technical strategy for command-and-control interoperability and adoption of open-systems standards. Hiring & Developing Technical Talent – Define the technical hiring bar for senior engineering roles, partner with engineering managers on long-term staffing strategy, and help grow the organization's technical capabilities. Travel Requirement – Members of this team typically travel around 10–20% of the year to different office locations, customer si