---
title: 'Staff Software Engineer, Autonomy & Motion Planning at Shield AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-autonomy-motion-planning-shield-ai-bengaluru-qdwt040whwf6'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-07'
---

# Staff Software Engineer, Autonomy & Motion Planning at Shield AI

- **Company:** Shield AI
- **Location:** Bengaluru, India
- **Employment:** internship
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-10
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/shieldai/9092fbe5-9f63-4ada-8e65-00d2f4754fd3

## Job description

This position on the Autonomy team in India will lead the delivery of autonomous behaviors into our products, acting as technical leads, senior individual contributors, and/or as team leads that are also hands-on contributors. We expect candidates to demonstrate unparalleled end-to-end outcome ownership, driving the architecting, design, delivery, support, and evolution of safe and effective mission autonomy software throughout the entire product lifecycle.

What you'll do:

- Develop tactical autonomy software to enable unmanned platforms to perform complex missions across air, land, sea, and space domains with minimal human supervision
- Implement and test behaviors that enable multi-agent coordination, target engagement, reconnaissance, and survivability in contested scenarios
- Work throughout the entire of the software development lifecycle, from requirements capture through design, implementation, verification, and validation, utilizing tools and workflows consistent with collaborative high-quality software development
- Champion a product-line mindset in technology road-mapping and to enable reuse of behaviors across multiple projects and portfolios
- Utilize your software and systems expertise to architect behaviors as scalable software subsystems, that may interact directly or indirectly with a breadth of system components (e.g., sensor processing, state estimation, peer-to-peer communications, contingency management, actuation, and payload interfacing)
- Leverage internal product and program-specific engineering teams to rapidly deliver state-of-the-art capabilities to vehicle platforms (whether internally and externally owned), with a clear path towards architecture and capability evolution over time
- Collaborate with external teams, aligning on interfacing requirements between diverse systems, often working closely with vehicle integration teams and associated operational subject matter experts (e.g., fighter pilots, UAV operators, etc.)
- Act as a subject matter expert for software engineering, representing software equities in a multi-stakeholder environment including engineering, business and sales leadership.
- Travel to co-locate with end-users and/or other teams up to 20% of the time

Required qualifications:

- BS /MS/PhD in Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field
- Proficient in production-level C++ software development
- 7+ years' experience in one or more of the following: software sub-system scheduling and integration, behavior planning, task and resource allocation, motion planning, optimization, or flight controls
- Experience with collaborative software development tools for version control, issue tracking, code reviews, and release management
- Proven ability to lead multi-disciplinary teams, set technical direction, and manage full project lifecycles from concept to deployment
- Capacity to learn and grow individually, while mentoring junior team members effectively, building team cohesion and capacity
- Desire to work in a highly collaborative, fast paced, enthusiastic, and mission-centric environment
- Capacity to act as the technical owner for an entire software system, including stakeholder engagement, requirements definition, roadmap management, team co-ordination, design, implementation, sustainment, and evolution Preferred qualifications:
- Experience across a breadth of technology readiness levels (TRLs) and demonstration of bridging concepts from research-grade to operationally ready
- Experience with mission systems integration, and ideally, hands-on experience supporting integration events and/or flight demonstrations
- Experience across a multitude of application areas, including but not limited to:
- Collaborative mission planning, behavior planning, synchronized teaming
- Automated red force vs blue force tactics
- Motion planning across a variety of vehicle classes, kinematic constraints, and team compositions
- Weapons target assignment, Sensor target pairing, sensor-centric control laws
- Collision avoidance, geofencing, and safety-monitoring
- Experience in more than one operational effect (e.g., strike, air combat, surveillance,

## About Shield AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Shield AI builds AI pilots and autonomous systems for military aircraft to protect service members and civilians.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series G, venture-backed)
- **Headquarters**: San Diego, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2015
- **Founders**: Brandon Tseng, Ryan Tseng, Andrew Reiter

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: Defense technology, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, aerospace
- Target customers: U.S. Department of Defense, allied nations’ military forces (B2G / Government)
- Mission or purpose statement: “Protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems.”

## Products & Services
- **Hivemind**: A combat‑tested, modular autonomy stack for aircraft – self‑driving technology for drones, jets, and helicopters. Includes path‑planning, mapping, state‑estimation, computer vision, and reinforcement learning. Type: Software (AI/autonomy).
- **V‑BAT**: A vertical take‑off and landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial system (UAS) designed for persistent ISR and strike missions. Type: Hardware (drone).
- **X‑BAT**: An advanced unmanned aircraft system with extended endurance and payload capacity, built for multi‑domain operations. Type: Hardware (drone).
- **Hivemind Vision Systems**: Computer‑vision and sensor‑fusion capabilities integrated into Hivemind for GPS‑denied environments. Type: Software + sensors.
- **Hivemind Enterprise**: A deployable version of Hivemind for third‑party platforms and commercial applications. Type: Software.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed (private company). Total funding raised: $3.6B (as of Series G in March 2026).
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue ~$21.7M (estimated, private) | Total Funding $3.6B (including $2B Series G led by JP Morgan Chase and Advent International, March 2026).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: JP Morgan Chase, Advent International, Blackstone, Riot Ventures, SnowPoint Ventures, Disruptive (55+ investors total). Strategic partners include U.S. DoD and allied defense forces.
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew 68.3% YoY to 1,283 employees; 338 active job postings (+57.2% YoY); operates in 5 countries (U.S., Australia, UAE, Norway, Ukraine); recent acquisitions of Sentient Vision Systems (2024), Heron Systems, MARTIN UAV.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Combat‑proven autonomy**: Hivemind has been tested in live military operations, providing a first‑mover advantage in contested, GPS‑denied environments.
- **Full‑stack integration**: Combines software (AI pilot), hardware (V‑BAT, X‑BAT), and sensor systems, creating a tightly integrated product ecosystem.
- **Cross‑functional engineering culture**: Engineers work across AI, robotics, aerospace, and defense – not siloed – enabling rapid iteration and field deployment.
- **Top talent pipeline**: Employees drawn from Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Amazon, Anduril, and other leading defense/tech firms.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale AI pilots across all domains**: Extend Hivemind from aircraft to ships, satellites, and ground vehicles (“every military asset”).
- **International expansion**: Growing presence in Australia, Europe, and Middle East via mission autonomy centers and partnerships.
- **Deepen autonomy stack**: Continued investment in reinforcement learning, simulation, and computer vision to maintain leadership in contested‑environment autonomy.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission‑driven work**: Directly contribute to protecting service members and civilians with cutting‑edge AI and robotics.
- **Cross‑functional teams**: Engineers collaborate across disciplines (AI, hardware, software, systems) on real‑world defense challenges.
- **Benefits**: Excellent medical coverage, mental health EAP, paid parental leave, pet insurance, flexible work hours, gym discounts (SD) / on‑site gym (DC), free parking, competitive compensation, 401k with match, stock benefits.
- **Work policy**: Flexible work hours; some offices (e.g., San Diego HQ, Arlington, DC) have on‑site facilities. Remote/hybrid options available depending on role.
- **Growth trajectory**: Rapidly scaling (68% headcount growth) with hundreds of open roles across engineering, operations, and program management.

## Sources
1. [shield.ai/about](https://shield.ai/about/)
2. [shield.ai/careers](https://shield.ai/careers/)
3. [LinkedIn – Shield AI](https://www.linkedin.com/company/shield-ai)
4. [CBInsights – Shield AI](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/shield-ai)
5. [Lever – Shield AI Jobs](https://jobs.lever.co/shieldai)

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- [Autonomy Engineer, Technical Documentation](https://feeny.ai/job/autonomy-engineer-technical-documentation-shield-ai-san-diego-97g67v4ys3n9) — San Diego, CA
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