We are hiring a Software Engineer, Autonomy Integration, who will be embedded in the Planning and Controls team and work day to day with Pilot's cross-functional Integration team. In this hands-on software role, you will build durable integration capability: reliable environments, representative end-to-end tests, diagnosable failures, and software that is ready for hardware and flight testing. You will draw on your experience in planning, controls, or autonomy decision-making and your systems integration skills to work across domain boundaries.
The Pilot Integration team provides stable reference integrations that component teams can use to add new capabilities and prove that they work as part of the larger autonomy stack. It builds and maintains the environments where Hivemind Pilot's autonomy capabilities come together. The team's work spans planning and controls, perception, simulation, vehicle interfaces, deployment, and system-level testing.
We are hiring across multiple experience levels. Depending on experience, engineers may begin with well-defined integrations and tests or independently own end-to-end workflows and ambiguous cross-system investigations.
What you'll do:
- Build and maintain stable Pilot integration environments, reference configurations, reusable test fixtures, and representative end-to-end examples.
- Partner with component teams as they add capabilities to the shared integration environment, maintain the integration baseline, and help resolve gaps in shared workflows, test harnesses, or extensibility.
- Develop and maintain automated software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop tests that exercise behavior across autonomy components.
- Integrate and debug production software across planning and controls, simulation, vehicle interfaces, and other parts of the autonomy stack.
- Investigate failures across system boundaries. Reproduce and instrument each problem, isolate the responsible layer, fix integration-owned defects, and give the owning team clear evidence when a component or infrastructure change is required.
- Develop integration-oriented bridge blocks and adaptors for common vehicle and hardware interfaces, along with the tests and documentation needed to maintain them.
- Improve repeatability with focused integration tooling for configuration validation, deployment, diagnostics, log collection, test orchestration, and failure triage.
- Support deployment of the integrated autonomy stack to representative hardware, including software configuration, telemetry, interface troubleshooting, and lab or field debugging.
- Work with the flight-test team to define test objectives, prepare integrated software and instrumentation, assess test readiness, support troubleshooting during test events, and analyze integration failures afterward.
- Write and maintain setup guides, reference configurations, troubleshooting runbooks, and executable examples. Contribute technical material to Pilot training.
- Surface brittle interfaces and recurring integration problems so that the responsible Pilot teams can make informed architectural decisions.
- Improve integration quality by reducing integration defects and increasing end-to-end test readiness.
Required qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in a field such as computer science or robotics, or equivalent practical experience.
- Experience developing or integrating planning, controls, or autonomy decision-making software.
- Strong production software engineering skills in modern C++ and Python.
- Hands-on experience integrating software with robotic or autonomous hardware, including deployment, interfaces, telemetry, and lab or field debugging.
- Experience with software-in-the-loop or hardware-in-the-loop testing and automated system-level tests.
- Experience developing and debugging software on Linux.
- Strong systems-debugging skills, including the ability to reason across configuration, software, network, timing, and hardware boundaries.
- Ability to write maintainable tests and tools for distributed or real-time systems.
- Ability to communicate technical findings clearly and work effectively with engineers from several disciplines.
- Ability to travel periodically and support lab, field, or flight-test events that may occur outside normal working hours.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience integrating across several autonomy domains, such as perception, state estimation, planning, controls, simulation, communications, or vehicle interfaces.
- Experience supporting aircraft integration or flight-test readiness.
- Experience with robotics middleware, vehicle protocols such as MAVLink, or integration adaptors.
- Experience designing repeatable, diagnosable end-to-end test environments for complex autonomous systems.
- Experience with configuration-driven systems, dependency compatibility, observability, or automated test orchestration.
- Experience delivering software for fielded, real-time, safety-critical, or resource-constrained systems.
- A record of leading ambiguous technical investigations or mentoring engineers through complex integration work.
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, robotics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
- Experience developing or integrating planning, controls, or autonomy decision-making software
- Strong production software engineering skills in modern C++ and Python
- Hands-on experience integrating software with robotic or autonomous hardware, including deployment, interfaces, telemetry, and lab or field debugging
- Experience with software-in-the-loop or hardware-in-the-loop testing and automated system-level tests
- Experience developing and debugging software on Linux
- Strong systems-debugging skills across configuration, software, network, timing, and hardware boundaries
- Ability to write maintainable tests and tools for distributed or real-time systems
- Ability to communicate technical findings clearly and collaborate with engineers from multiple disciplines
- Ability to travel periodically and support lab, field, or flight-test events outside normal working hours
- Experience integrating across autonomy domains such as perception, state estimation, planning, controls, simulation, communications, or vehicle interfaces
- Experience supporting aircraft integration or flight-test readiness
- Experience with robotics middleware, vehicle protocols such as MAVLink, or integration adaptors
- Experience designing repeatable, diagnosable end-to-end test environments for complex autonomous systems
- Experience with configuration-driven systems, dependency compatibility, observability, or automated test orchestration
- Experience delivering software for fielded, real-time, safety-critical, or resource-constrained systems
- Record of leading ambiguous technical investigations or mentoring engineers through complex integration work
What the Team is Saying
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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Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
