Principal Software Engineer, Software Integration

Introduction to Shield AI

Founded in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed defense technology company whose mission is to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems. In pursuit of this mission, Shield AI is building the world’s best AI pilot. Its AI pilot, Hivemind, has flown a fighter jet (F-16), a vertical takeoff and landing drone (V-BAT), and a quadcopter (Nova). The company has offices in San Diego, Dallas, Washington DC, and abroad. Shield AI’s products and people are currently in the field actively supporting operations with the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. allies.

Job Description

As part of the Hivemind Commander (HMC) team, you’ll play an active role in shaping and implementing our HMC Core Product. This HMC Core Product is a foundational, extensible set of services that enable both human operators (e.g. via command-and-control user interfaces) and third parties (e.g. to interoperate with wider networks) to interact with active Hivemind Edge (HME) autonomy systems and aircraft. You’ll collaborate cross-functionally with other Core Product engineers, Solutions engineers and new customers to develop robust interfaces and architectures that enable seamless integration with new systems and user interfaces. Ultimately, you’ll make it easier to improve the ability of our software to adapt to new systems, thereby enhancing the quality and reliability of our products to protect service members and civilians with AI systems.

What you'll do

• Contribute to the HMC platform that will revolutionize the way engineers, operators, and subject matter experts develop and integrate autonomy solutions.
• Contribute to building, extending and documenting interfaces for internal and customer use.
• Contribute to building a robust command and control software development kit (SDK) for internal and customer user.
• Become deeply familiar with the entire HME System and its extension points.
• Learn and extend well-known interoperability interfaces, allowing HME to seamlessly connect to legacy third party systems.
• Implement robust APIs and middleware solutions to facilitate seamless interaction between existing and future HME Systems.
• Implement comprehensive documentation and tutorials to onboard internal engineers and external clients quickly, providing clear instructions on how to use HMC core products to develop and deploy autonomy solutions effectively.
• Integrate test and evaluation capabilities into continuous integration pipelines.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including robotics engineers, simulation specialists, and cloud architects, to ensure alignment with overall system goals and business objectives.
• Work with teams of supremely talented software engineers who care deeply about the solutions they create.
• Leverage your skills across both front-end and back-end tiers of various applications.
• Identify areas of technical debt across the stack, analyze and synthesize solutions and paths towards achieving them.

Required qualifications

• 15+ years of related experience developing large, production quality software systems.
• Expertise and deep experience with modern C++ (C++17 and beyond)
• Expertise in deep experience with architectural design and implementation of large and complex distributed systems
• Professional experience developing in Linux environments.
• Experience with Git and code management tools.
• Demonstrated record of working hard, being a trustworthy teammate, holding yourself and others to high standards, and being kind to others
• Fluid intelligence that allows one to operate effectively in sometimes ambiguous conditions, while finding opportunities to drive technical efforts and force multiply.
• Excellent grasp of software development and coding principles with high productivity in a mainstream language (e.g. C++, Go, Python, etc.)
• Strong knowledge of modern software engineering best practices
• Passionate about developing high-quality and optimized software solutions.
• Good software hygiene regarding code documentation, unit testing, bug tracking.
• Strong technical collaboration skills and a desire to develop new skills.
• Excited by a fast-moving environment with a highly motivated group.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with in aerospace and/or robotics industries.
• Experience with command and control, mission planning and other operator-oriented systems for UAVs.
• Experience with international interoperability standards like STANAG4586.
• Experience with team leadership, or as a technical project lead.
• Experience with front end web-technologies, such as React and Typescript.
• Experience with complex system configurations management using new technologies such as Cuelang, Helm, etc.
• Experience developing and maintaining software development kits (SDKs).
• Experience with web security, and security technologies such as OpenSSL.
• Experience with containerization and container management using Kubernetes, Docker, etc.