Lead the future of physical AI in defense by building the reasoning models for unmanned autonomous systems, across aerial, maritime, land, and space domains.
We are looking for a leader with not only the deep technical expertise or the abilities to build a world-class team, but also someone with the strong conviction that AI will protect service members and civilians. This role is responsible for building and leading a team that researches and designs models, establishes training pipelines and rigorous evaluations, and ensures mission effectiveness at the edge under real-world constraints. These models must support individual vehicles and coordinated teams of hundreds of agents, while meeting the constraints of operating at the edge in contested environments.
In this role, you’ll partner closely with world-class teams in perception, MLOps, large-scale simulation, and inference to deliver capabilities as part of the broader Hivemind Enterprise team.
What success looks like: your team’s reasoning models deliver exceptional outcomes for baseline platforms and missions, which can then be rapidly and confidently adapted to new platforms and missions by our solutions engineering organisation.
What you'll do:
- Build & lead the team that designs, trains, adapts, and evaluates reasoning and cognition models intended for deployment across our unmanned platforms.
- Define the technical roadmap for single-agent and multi-agent models, including architecture choices, training methods, data strategy, and evaluation criteria.
- Make informed tradeoffs among foundation-model approaches (e.g. VLMs, VLAs), specialized deep-learning models, and traditional AI/ML methods.
- Advance model capabilities for interpreting context, reasoning over time, coordinating among agents, and adapting to incomplete or changing information.
- Drive training efforts, including appropriate use of self-supervised learning, imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and distillation.
- Establish rigorous evaluations in simulation and with real-world data. Measure generalization, robustness, uncertainty, and performance as team size and operating conditions change.
- Recruit, develop, and manage a high-performing team of AI/ML engineers.
- Translate edge constraints into model-design and training decisions in partnership with hardware, autonomy, and inference teams.
- Communicate technical tradeoffs and model limitations clearly to research, engineering, product, and organizational leadership.
- Deliver trained models and clear performance evidence to partner teams.
- Create tight feedback loops among model failures, data curation, training experiments, and re-evaluation.
Required qualifications:
- BS/MS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, and/or similar degree, or equivalent practical experience. Typically requires a minimum of 10 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 9 years and a Master’s degree; or 8 years with a PhD; or equivalent work experience.
- Exceptional track record of leading the development and deployment of state-of-the-art ML models in production environments, making difficult prioritisation decisions, and communicating tradeoffs across disciplines.
- 5+ years of people management experience leading engineering or applied research teams, with demonstrated success hiring, coaching, developing technical leaders, and managing performance.
- Deep expertise in foundation models, modern deep learning, model architectures, and the training ecosystem.
- Strong command of training and adaptation approaches such as self-supervised learning, supervised fine-tuning, imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and distillation.
- Experience defining datasets, training objectives, experimental workflows, benchmarks, and reproducible criteria for comparing models.
- Fluency in traditional AI/ML techniques and an ability to combine them thoughtfully with learned models.
- Experience with training frameworks such as PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow, etc.
- Experience with multimodal, embodied, robotic, or autonomous-system models; familiarity with VLA models and world models is particularly relevant.
- Strong familiarity with traditional robotics algorithms, e.g. path planning, probabilistic modeling, optimization approaches, etc.
- Familiarity with NVIDIA Jetson and other edge compute platforms (e.g. Qualcomm, AMD, etc.)
Preferred qualifications:
- PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or similar degree.
- Expertise in optimising and deploying ML models to resource-constrained hardware platforms.
- Experience with simulation-to-real on autonomous systems.
- Experience managing managers or leading multiple engineering teams.
- Experience with unmanned autonomous systems in defense applications
- Familiarity with large, distributed systems
- Familiarity with high-fidelity simulation, e.g. rigid body dynamics, sensor & actuator models, etc.
- Experience managing and interfacing with external partners and vendors
Skills Required
- Bachelor’s or master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
- Typically 10 years of related experience with a bachelor’s degree, 9 years with a master’s degree, or 8 years with a PhD, or equivalent work experience
- Track record leading development and production deployment of state-of-the-art machine learning models
- At least 5 years of people-management experience leading engineering or applied research teams
- Experience hiring, coaching, developing technical leaders, and managing performance
- Deep expertise in foundation models, modern deep learning, model architectures, and training ecosystems
- Strong command of self-supervised learning, supervised fine-tuning, imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and distillation
- Experience defining datasets, training objectives, experimental workflows, benchmarks, and reproducible model-comparison criteria
- Fluency in traditional AI and machine learning techniques
- Experience with PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow, or similar training frameworks
- Experience with multimodal, embodied, robotic, or autonomous-system models
- Familiarity with VLA models and world models
- Strong familiarity with robotics algorithms including path planning, probabilistic modeling, and optimization
- Familiarity with NVIDIA Jetson and other edge-compute platforms such as Qualcomm or AMD
- PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a similar discipline
- Expertise optimizing and deploying machine learning models on resource-constrained hardware
- Experience with simulation-to-real development for autonomous systems
- Experience managing managers or leading multiple engineering teams
- Experience with unmanned autonomous systems in defense applications
- Familiarity with large distributed systems
- Familiarity with high-fidelity simulation, including rigid-body dynamics and sensor or actuator models
- Experience managing and interfacing with external partners and vendors
Shield AI Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Healthcare Strength — Company materials highlight comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with mental-health support and an EAP. Third-party benefits summaries also portray health coverage as a strong component of the package.
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Retirement Support — Offerings include a 401(k) with employer matching, cited on the careers page and independent benefits directories. Multiple sources indicate a match exists, though exact formulas have varied over time and warrant confirmation.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Company communications describe equity for all full-time hires and stock benefits as part of total rewards. Independent listings also note company equity/RSUs as a standard element.
Shield AI Insights
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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