Senior Software Engineer, Shield AI
$120-230k
Actual salary range is dependent on location. Offers bonus and equity
Office located in San Diego, California / San Mateo, California
Building AI aircraft pilots
Open for applications
Building AI aircraft pilots
1001+ employees
Open for applications
$120-230k
Actual salary range is dependent on location. Offers bonus and equity
Office located in San Diego, California / San Mateo, California
1001+ employees
Company mission
To protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems.
Role
Who you are
- 4+ years of software engineering experience or equivalent practical experience
- Demonstrated technical judgment in the design and operation of full-stack applications, backend services, APIs, or distributed systems
- Systems thinking and the ability to turn recurring or ambiguous needs into coherent, reusable solutions
- Track record of owning production software from initial design through operation and continuous improvement
- Effective collaboration and communication across engineering, product, and organizational stakeholders
Desirable
- Experience creating shared capabilities adopted across multiple products or engineering teams
- Depth in one or more relevant domains, such as identity and authentication, public APIs and SDKs, or OpenTelemetry and high-volume telemetry data
- Experience building modern web applications and the backend services that support them
- Experience building and operating secure, reliable software in regulated or compliance-driven environments
What the job involves
- Hivemind is looking for an experienced Full Stack Software Engineer to join our Shared Services Engineering team
- The Shared Services team builds and operates common services, SDKs, APIs, and customer-facing applications that connect Shield’s products
- These capabilities reduce duplicated engineering and help create a consistent Shield experience across product types
- You will work across the stack, from customer-facing web applications to backend services and product integrations
- You will partner with product and engineering teams to understand shared needs, turn ambiguous problems into durable solutions, and own your work from design through production operation
- This is a product-oriented engineering role with meaningful technical ownership
- You will help shape new capabilities, contribute to architectural decisions, and build secure, reliable systems for external customers and internal engineering teams
- Design, build, and operate full-stack applications, backend services, SDKs, and APIs
- Contribute to shared authentication, telemetry integrations, the Customer Support Portal, and future public telemetry APIs
- Partner with product and engineering teams to understand shared needs and develop reusable capabilities
- Establish secure, reliable, documented, and versioned interfaces for internal engineering teams and external customers
- Own solutions through design, implementation, testing, deployment, and production support
- Contribute to technical direction through design reviews, thoughtful tradeoffs, and collaboration with other engineers
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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