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 Integration & Test 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.
In this role, you will lead a team responsible for integrating, validating, and scaling the Hivemind autonomy platform across simulation, hardware-in-the-loop, and operational environments. You will serve as both a technical leader and people manager—guiding engineers in the development of robust integration and test capabilities while remaining actively engaged in hands-on system integration, validation, and customer-focused workflows. As a power user of the Hivemind SDK, you will develop a deep understanding of its capabilities, identify gaps from a customer perspective, and drive improvements across the platform. You will partner closely with Engineering, Product, and Program teams to integrate new autonomy capabilities, evaluate feature completeness, and ensure customers can efficiently build, test, and deploy mission-ready autonomous systems. This position bridges technical leadership, engineering execution, and real-world autonomy applications—ensuring our platform empowers customers to build reliable, world-class autonomous systems.
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What you'll do
Mentor, and develop a team of engineers focused on software integration, system validation, and developer experience.
Establish team priorities, drive execution, and foster a culture of technical excellence, ownership, and continuous improvement.
Actively contribute to system integration, validation, and debugging activities and develop deep expertise in our autonomy stack.
Guide the architecture and implementation of integration frameworks, deployment workflows, and configuration management tools that streamline validation across Software-in-the-Loop (SIL), Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL), and flight environments.
Review system logs, telemetry, and rosbag data to diagnose integration defects
Lead cross-functional investigations, establish corrective actions, and create tooling that accelerates debugging and issue resolution.
- Ensure integrated capabilities meet product requirements and interface specifications.
- 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 middleware.
Demonstrated experience designing integration workflows, communicating system dependencies, and triaging and reporting integration defects across subsystem boundaries.
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.
- Experience leading software integration engineers and owning integration roadmaps and release schedules
- 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 supporting customer applications
