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: Shield AI's Hivemind Detection, Tracking, and Mapping (DTM) team develops perception capabilities that allow autonomous systems to understand objects, motion, sensors, and terrain across air, maritime, and ground domains.
We are seeking a Staff Engineer to develop these capabilities from algorithms and production C++ libraries through integration, verification, and delivery in the Hivemind SDK. This is a full-stack perception product-development role. You will bring depth in at least one core area such as object detection, object tracking, computer vision, image processing, sensor modeling, or sensor fusion, and work comfortably across adjacent parts of the stack.
You will help turn prototypes, research, and partner-developed technology into reusable, configurable, well-tested product capabilities. What you'll do: Design and implement production perception capabilities in modern C++, with emphasis on clear interfaces, correctness, performance, maintainability, and automated test coverage. Own features across the development lifecycle: clarify requirements, evaluate technical approaches, develop algorithms and libraries, integrate them into the Pilot runtime, and carry them through SDK validation, documentation, and release readiness.
Contribute deep technical judgment in one or more DTM areas, including object detection, object tracking, computer vision, image processing, sensor and measurement modeling, mapping, or multi-sensor fusion. Work across adjacent layers such as sensor data contracts, coordinate frames, timing, configuration, simulation, replay, analyzers, embedded deployment, and end-to-end perception workflows. Diagnose difficult system behavior using source code, logs, recorded sensor data, simulation, and focused experiments; drive issues from symptom through root cause, corrective action, and regression coverage.
Participate in design reviews and code reviews, communicate technical tradeoffs concisely, mentor other engineers, and help improve the architecture and engineering practices of the DTM stack. Use modern AI-assisted engineering tools effectively while remaining accountable for the design, technical accuracy, security, test coverage, and reviewability of the resulting work. Evaluate how emerging foundation-model capabilities may strengthen detection, tracking, image understanding, simulation, and perception workflows, and help identify practical paths from promising technology to dependable product capability.
Required qualifications: Significant professional experience developing and delivering production C++ software for robotics, autonomy, perception, real-time systems, simulation, or another complex technical product. Deep experience in at least one relevant technical area, such as object detection, object tracking, computer vision, image processing, sensor modeling, sensor fusion, estimation, or mapping.
Demonstrated ability to work beyond a prototype or isolated algorithm and deliver maintainable software with clear interfaces, tests, diagnostics, documentation, and integration into a larger system. Strong debugging and systems-thinking skills, including the ability to reason across algorithms, software architecture, data contracts, configuration, timing, coordinate frames, compute behavior, and sensor data.
Proficiency with Python tools for technical analysis, visualization, experimentation, or verification. Experience