As a GenAI Tooling & Developer Experience Engineer on the HMS DevOps Team, you will design, develop, and maintain the GenAI tooling that accelerates the development velocity of your fellow software engineers. You will collaborate with robotics and autonomy software engineers to understand their workflows, remove friction, and enable effective GenAI-assisted development in both commercial and government environments while meeting requirements for secure, controlled data.
You will build the automation, infrastructure, and integration layers that make GenAI useful across the software engineering organization. You will streamline processes across GitLab, Jira, and Confluence so colleagues spend less time coordinating work and more time creating software. You will apply your expertise in C++, Python, build systems, and developer tooling to provide more power and context to our developers and GenAI tools.
This is a high-leverage role where your impact scales through the work of others: every improvement you make to GenAI tooling, automation, and developer workflows will help engineers across HMS move faster, work more securely, and spend more time solving the hardest robotics and autonomy problems.
What you'll do:
- Design, develop, and maintain GenAI-enabled developer tools for C++, Python, and Node.js software projects.
- Partner with robotics and autonomy engineers to identify high-friction workflows and convert them into secure, repeatable GenAI-assisted tooling.
- Extend our custom GenAI harness with Python or Bash tools, secure LLM routing, audited execution paths, and local containerized environments.
- Build integrations across GitLab, Jira, Confluence, and internal developer systems to provide GenAI tools with useful engineering context.
- Improve build, test, and developer-environment workflows, including GenAI-assisted adoption of reproducible Nix development environments.
- Support engineers adopting GenAI tooling through documentation, examples, troubleshooting, and feedback-driven improvements.
Required qualifications:
- Typically requires a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
- Fluent with GenAI-assisted development. You can pair with AI tools to explore ideas, generate code, debug issues, and quickly turn rough concepts into working prototypes.
- Hands-on experience building LLM-powered tools for software development.
- Direct experience writing scripts (Bash, Python) and utilizing webhooks/APIs to automate and integrate engineering tools (such as Jira, Confluence, and GitLab).
- Hands-on experience with containerization (Docker, multi-stage builds) and package managers (such as Conan, Poetry, or Nix).
- Familiarity with deploying and managing application workloads in cloud environments (such as Azure Gov Cloud or AWS).
- Experience with secure software development practices, secret management, and identity providers (Active Directory, Entra ID).
- Ability to obtain and maintain an active U.S. SECRET security clearance (U.S. citizenship required).
Preferred qualifications:
- Practical experience building, maintaining, and scaling enterprise CI/CD systems.
- Experience developing tools in CUI and ITAR environments.
- Expertise in tuning LLMs for specialized use
- Familiarity with deploying custom LLMs
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
- Fluent with GenAI-assisted development; able to pair with AI tools to generate code and prototypes.
- Hands-on experience building LLM-powered tools for software development.
- Direct experience writing scripts (Bash, Python) and using webhooks/APIs to automate and integrate engineering tools (Jira, Confluence, GitLab).
- Hands-on experience with containerization (Docker, multi-stage builds) and package managers (Conan, Poetry, or Nix).
- Familiarity with deploying and managing application workloads in cloud environments (Azure Gov Cloud or AWS).
- Experience with secure software development practices, secret management, and identity providers (Active Directory, Entra ID).
- Ability to obtain and maintain an active U.S. SECRET security clearance (U.S. citizenship required).
- Practical experience building, maintaining, and scaling enterprise CI/CD systems.
- Experience developing tools in CUI and ITAR environments.
- Expertise in tuning LLMs for specialized use.
- Familiarity with deploying custom LLMs.
What the Team is Saying
Shield AI Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Healthcare Strength — Company materials describe excellent medical, dental, and vision coverage alongside a mental‑health EAP. Site perks such as an onsite gym in DC and a gym discount in San Diego support a health‑focused offering.
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Retirement Support — Careers materials highlight a 401(k) with company match as part of the standard package. A Total Rewards overview emphasizes retirement features within a broader, transparent compensation view.
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Career-Linked Recognition & Rewards — Compensation for in‑demand technical and senior go‑to‑market roles is described as competitive, with visible engineering ranges and top‑end packages. This points to meaningful upside tied to role, level, and scarce skills.
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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Shield AI Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
