Staff Engineer, Shield AI
Digital Infrastructure
Building AI aircraft pilots
Open for applications
Building AI aircraft pilots
1001+ employees
Open for applications
1001+ employees
Company mission
To protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems.
Role
Who you are
- Typically requires a minimum of 7 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 6 years and a Master’s degree; or 4 years with a PhD; or equivalent work experience
- 3+ years demonstrated experience with cloud computing solutions and architecture, with a focus on Kubernetes and container orchestration
- Experience with supporting C++ or Python-based applications
- Solid understanding of Linux/Unix-based systems (specifically in networking and experience in designing and implementing networked applications)
- BS/MS in Computer Science, similar degree, or equivalent practical experience
- Demonstrated record of working hard, being a trustworthy teammate, holding yourself and others to high standards, and being kind to others
- Experience debugging/troubleshooting deployed, distributed problems
- Experience developing and deploying automation tooling (ex. Ansible, Chef, Puppet)
- Must be available to support onsite in our London office location
What the job involves
- ShieldAI has developed a software factory for building, optimizing, evaluating, and analyzing autonomy solutions
- The technology has drawn significant interest from industry
- We are currently working with these customers to investigate modern warfighting problems and develop/deliver solutions
- This position will support deploying, integrating, maintaining, and developing components of this factory for our autonomy teams and customers within isolated/specialized environments
- Work with a small team of engineers and administrators
- Integrate our AI training factory and tooling onto new hardware
- Provide software updates and configuration management between various isolated environments
- Ensure proper operation of our AI training factory and tooling
- Coordinate with autonomy teams to build and meet requirements
- Solve challenging and important problems
Salary benchmarks
Our take
Self-driving vehicles present enormous benefits for the transportation industry, with the potential to increase the safety and efficiency of cars, trucks, and commercial airlines. However, such technological innovation is less present within the military transportation sector, despite the benefits that AI piloting would produce for the operation of drones and aircraft.
Shield AI is developing Hivemind, an AI-driven pilot that can operate drones and aircraft autonomously, without needing GPS, communications, or pilots. In addition to navigation, the technology is also designed to facilitate indoor building clearance, integrated defence breaching, and has the ability to learn and autonomously execute aircraft missions.
Whilst similar AI-driven pilot software has begun to appear in Chinese military research programs, Shield AI's target is the US. By developing fully autonomous piloting integrations for any type of aircraft, the company aims to future-proof the US military without the need for bespoke aircraft design. It has generated massive amounts of funding to support continued scaling and R&D efforts.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 14 rounds)
Mar 2026
$1.5bn
SERIES G
Mar 2026
$500m
LATE VC
Total funding: $3.0bn
Company benefits
- Excellent Medical Coverage
- Mental Health Employee Assistance Program
- Paid Parental Leave
- Pet Insurance
- Flexible Work Hours
- Gym Discount (San Diego)
- Onsite Gym (DC)
- Free Parking
- Competitive Compensation
- 401K Services and Match
- Stock Benefits
Company HQ
Core-Columbia, San Diego, CA
Leadership
Ryan Tseng
(Co-Founder & President)Experience as CEO, CTO and Founder of WiPower from 2006 to 2010. Technical Lead for Wireless Power Program for Qualcomm from 2010 to 2013.
Brandon Tseng
(Co-Founder & President)Naval Officer for the US Navy from 2009 to 2015.
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