Shield AI is a defense technology company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. We build autonomy systems for air, maritime, space, and other platforms operating in complex and contested environments.
Forge is the engineering platform used to build, integrate, test, and operate Hivemind capabilities. It connects autonomy developers with the applications, services, compute, data, and workflows they need to move from local development to deployed systems.
We are looking for a full-stack engineer interested in customer-facing products, developer tools, and AI-assisted workflows. You will partner with internal subject-matter experts to build an extensible application platform and complete applications on it.
Shield AI’s Hivemind developers are the platform’s primary design partners and proving ground. Forge is also designed for external engineering teams to adopt, extend, and integrate into their own environments.
You will help evolve Forge into an integrated engineering environment with shared foundations for APIs, user interfaces, extensions, model integrations, and agent tools. Working across frontend architecture, backend services, platform contracts, and deployment, you will validate the platform through real workflows. Your work will help engineers understand complex systems, develop autonomy software, investigate failures, and deliver reliable capabilities faster.
What you'll do:
- Build and operate a full-stack platform embedded in the workflows used to train, validate, and deploy the AI Pilot.
- Design a composable UI architecture that lets applications contribute widgets, dashboards, commands, and shared resource context.
- Define typed, versioned contracts between the platform and independently developed Forge applications.
- Create workflows for teams to package, publish, configure, install, upgrade, and disable applications.
- Enable Forge’s native AI experiences and external agent harnesses to understand active context, invoke authorized tools, navigate applications, and compose dashboards.
- Deliver consistent application behavior across local-development and remote-cluster environments.
- Partner with simulation, autonomy, and ML subject-matter experts to build initial applications, validate the platform against real workflows, and incorporate what you learn.
- Work across infrastructure, security, product, and design to shape the platform’s architecture and engineering practices.
Key outcomes:
- Applications behave consistently across local-development and remote-cluster environments, even when their deployment and service lifecycles differ.
- Application developers can move quickly using clear contracts, examples, documentation, and authoring guides.
- Hivemind teams can develop, integrate, test, and diagnose autonomy capabilities more quickly using Forge applications and platform services.
- Users can combine applications, tools, and shared context into persistent workflows tailored to their needs and share those workflows within their organization.
- Internal teams and external customers can build integrated Forge applications that extend these workflows without modifying the core platform.
- Forge’s embedded AI and external agent harnesses can explore and operate the same catalog of platform tools through shared contracts.
Required qualifications:
- Experience owning production full-stack applications from design and implementation through rollout and support.
- Strong proficiency with TypeScript and React or an equivalent modern web stack.
- Experience building production backend services in Go, Python, Rust, or a comparable language.
- Experience designing typed, versioned APIs and contracts between independently deployed components.
- Strong knowledge of web and distributed-system architecture, including state management, routing, asynchronous communication, browser security, authentication, authorization, and failure handling.
- Ability to build intuitive technical tools for engineers and test them at the unit, integration, and system levels.
- Sound judgment about when to extend an existing system, introduce an abstraction, or keep a solution intentionally small.
- Clear communication skills and the ability to work across frontend, backend, infrastructure, and product disciplines.
Preferred qualifications:
- Strong proficiency with TypeScript and React or an equivalent modern web stack.
- Experience building production backend services in Go, Python, Rust, or a comparable language.
- Experience designing typed, versioned APIs and contracts between independently deployed components.
- Strong knowledge of web and distributed-system architecture, including state management, routing, asynchronous communication, browser security, authentication, authorization, and failure handling.
- Ability to build intuitive technical tools for engineers and test them at the unit, integration, and system levels.
- Sound judgment about when to extend an existing system, introduce an abstraction, or keep a solution intentionally small.
- Clear communication skills and the ability to work across frontend, backend, infrastructure, and product disciplines.
Why join us:
- Connect your work directly to the mission. The platform and applications you build help engineers develop, validate, and deliver the autonomy software behind Hivemind.
- Define human-and-agent workflows. Design how engineers and AI agents use the same platform tools while preserving user control, security, and accountability.
- Own complete workflows. Work across user experience, frontend architecture, backend services, APIs, deployment, and operations.
- Build alongside engaged users. Partner with engineers solving autonomy, simulation, data, and infrastructure problems, and see the direct effect of your decisions.
Skills Required
- Experience owning production full-stack applications from design and implementation through rollout and support.
- Strong proficiency with TypeScript and React or an equivalent modern web stack.
- Experience building production backend services in Go, Python, Rust, or a comparable language.
- Experience designing typed, versioned APIs and contracts between independently deployed components.
- Strong knowledge of web and distributed-system architecture, including state management, routing, asynchronous communication, browser security, authentication, authorization, and failure handling.
- Ability to build intuitive technical tools for engineers and test them at unit, integration, and system levels.
- Sound judgment about when to extend an existing system, introduce an abstraction, or keep a solution intentionally small.
- Clear communication skills and ability to work across frontend, backend, infrastructure, and product disciplines.
What the Team is Saying
What We Do
At Shield AI, you won't wait years to see your work reach the field. You'll build hardware and software that operates in the real world right now, in the hands of the people who depend on it. Hivemind, our AI pilot, has been flying since 2018. It has flown more than 30 platforms, including an F-16, and it now sits under a U.S. Air Force production contract for Collaborative Combat Aircraft. When you write code or shape a system here, you contribute to technology with a proven flight record and a clear production future. V-BAT flies intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions with an operational record that stretches from Ukraine to the Indo-Pacific. It delivers eyes where they matter most, in the most demanding conditions on earth. The teams behind it watch their work get tested where the stakes are real. X-BAT takes its first flight this year. It's an AI-piloted fighter that needs no runway, built to operate where traditional aircraft can't. Join now and you help shape a program at its earliest, most formative stage. That's the kind of ground-floor work that defines a career. Do the most impactful work of your life, on problems that matter. Autonomy at this level asks a lot of you. You'll take on problems in perception, planning, and control that few teams anywhere are equipped to solve. You'll work across disciplines, from aerospace and robotics to machine learning and systems engineering, alongside people who hold themselves to an exacting standard and expect the same from you. Our mission is clear: protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems. That purpose runs through every decision, every design review, and every deployment. It's why the work here carries a weight you can feel. Ready to join our mission? Explore our open roles and find where you fit.
Why Work With Us
Founded in 2015 by a former Navy SEAL, Shield AI builds AI pilots and uncrewed aircraft. Veterans aren't an afterthought here, they're at every level. It's why the work carries weight: AI pilots and uncrewed aircraft flying real missions, from Ukraine to the Indo-Pacific, protecting service members and civilians.
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Shield AI Teams
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Shield AI Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
