What you'll do:
- Research, design, and implement state‑of‑the‑art multi‑target tracking and data association algorithms.
- Develop production‑quality C++ software for deployed military aviation platforms, ensuring deterministic, real‑time performance.
- Build and maintain comprehensive unit, integration, and system‑level tests validating algorithm correctness and robustness.
- Enhance and calibrate sensor models within advanced simulation and HWIL environments.
- Collaborate on feature planning, decomposition, and milestone execution within an agile development framework.
- Contribute to flight‑test planning, performance analysis, benchmarking, and regression evaluation.
- (Principal-level applicants) Provide technical leadership, design reviews, algorithmic mentorship, and subject‑matter expertise across the autonomy organization.
Required qualifications:
- Strong to expert proficiency in modern C++ (C++11 or newer) and object‑oriented design principles.
- Professional experience deploying C++ software into embedded or real‑time systems, ideally for DoD or aerospace applications.
- Hands‑on experience designing and implementing state estimation algorithms (e.g., KF, EKF, UKF, ESKF) for real‑world systems.
- Demonstrated ability to develop, optimize, and maintain complex tracking or sensor fusion algorithms.
- Experience with CI pipelines, automated testing frameworks, and high‑reliability software practices.
- Familiarity with MATLAB or Python for prototyping is acceptable; however, primary development experience must be in C++. Candidates with MATLAB‑dominant backgrounds are unlikely to be a fit.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience designing, developing, and deploying multi-target tracking systems for defense applications across one or more domains: air, maritime, ground, or space.
- Familiarity with tracking architectures for radar, EO/IR, acoustic, RF, AIS, ADS-B, or ELINT sensors.
- Experience building and tuning error budgets, developing performance models, and conducting sensitivity analyses for estimation/tracking accuracy.
- Hands-on experience implementing and optimizing multi-hypothesis tracking (MHT), joint probabilistic data association (JPDA), or random finite set (RFS)-based filters.
- Exposure to distributed or hierarchical fusion, including track-to-track fusion or multi-platform coordination.
- Experience supporting requirements derivation, verification, and validation of tracking systems in DoD or IC programs, especially in operationally representative environments.
- Understanding of target dynamics modeling, including kinematic and non-kinematic state representations (e.g., turn rate models, coordinated motion, behavioral cues).
- Familiarity with sensor registration, line-of-sight geometry reconstruction, time synchronization, and calibration of extrinsics and timing offsets.
- (For Principal-level candidates) Demonstrated technical leadership building multi-year road maps and leading high-performing teams through design and deployment of modern trackers.
Top Skills
What We Do
Founded in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed deep-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include the V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, Hivemind Enterprise, and the Hivemind Vision product lines. With nine offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific, Shield AI’s technology actively supports operations worldwide.
Why Work With Us
What makes Shield AI special is our people. We unlock the power of autonomy, and in the face of overwhelming odds and challenges, we find ways to win and make a difference for our customers. We bring together software, AI, and aerospace engineering disciplines to deploy the most intelligent aviation capabilities in the world.
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