Shield AI · Washington, D.C.
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 Autonomous Pilot Integration team for launched effects builds autonomy solutions for small, often air- or ground-launched platforms that operate in multi-agent fleets and frequently in disconnected or air-gapped environments. We combine capabilities from the Autonomy Capabilities team (motion planning, tactics), the Perception team (e.g., track fusion), and the HivemindSDK to develop the autonomy software that runs on launched effects platforms, then integrate, validate, and field it on the real hardware — for U.S. and international defense customers. Our engineers write new autonomy code — such as mission behaviors, platform-specific control, multi-agent coordination, contingencies, and executive autonomy — and own it end-to-end from software-in-the-loop, to hardware-in-the-loop, to vehicle-in-the-loop, to live test exercise.
In this role, you'll lead a team of autonomy engineers working on launched effects programs — owning their delivery, their growth, and the technical health of your area. A core part of the job is growing the team: hiring strong engineers, mentoring them through hard technical work, and shaping their career development. You'll stay technically active — close enough to the code and the integration work to make sound technical decisions, to be credible to your team, and to lead them through the design, development, and delivery of a major capability or program. You'll partner closely with the Autonomy Capabilities and Perception teams, feature crews, autopilot vendors (e.g., PX4, ArduPilot), C2 providers, and customer/contractor partners that staff and operate alongside our team. This portfolio runs at a fast cadence — frequent Capability Release milestones, multi-agent fleet operations, air-gapped deployments at scale, and demanding live exercises — and you'll set the pace for your team accordingly.
Shield AI is committed to developing cutting-edge autonomy for unmanned platforms across every operating domain — air, maritime, space, and effects/expendables — in service of the U.S. Department of Defense and our international defense customers. Our Autonomous Pilot Integration engineers bridge the gap between R&D and deployment, ensuring autonomous systems function reliably and effectively wherever and whenever they're needed most.
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