Senior Staff Engineer, Autonomy Capabilities – Maritime (R5363)

About the Job:

Focusing on the maritime portfolio, you’ll be creating autonomy capabilities for USVs, UUVs, and cooperating UAVs that enable them to perform advanced single- and multi-agent teaming missions beyond conventional motion planning and waypoint following.  The functionality you add will enable teams to use their diverse payloads and maneuvering characteristics to search for, localize, and pursue targets while avoiding sensed threats and obstacles that pose a risk to platform safety.  In many of these applications, you’ll have the opportunity to build capabilities from the ground up and be the first to integrate them onto new platforms.  You’ll traditionally start with shorter-term R&D efforts or aligned customer programs but with the intent that successful efforts will grow into larger, multi-year programs. 

As a Senior Staff Engineer, you will lead the technical direction for the portfolio, driving the evolution of autonomy capabilities and architectures across multiple programs.  At this level, you’ll combine your deep technical expertise and systems level thinking to not only provide capabilities that meet the needs of the now, but to anticipate the needs of the future to ensure long-term portfolio success.  You’ll take an active role in mentoring engineers across the organization and be a key expert that leadership leans-on for decomposing ambiguous customer needs into tangible design approaches.

What you'll do:

• Robust Motion Planning – Automate unmanned surface vehicle (USV) and/or unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) maneuvering through advanced motion planning and adherence to safety constraints including keep-out volumes, cooperative and uncooperative vehicles, and depth limitations

• Localization and Tracking – Employ cutting edge approaches for passive and active localization by defining fusion modalities, sensor requirements, and observability-aware maneuvering capabilities to maximize information gleaned from single- or multi-agent sensor networks

• Safe Maritime Operations – Keep vehicle safety as a central focus within autonomous behavior architectures to provide run-time assurance, ensure COLREGS adherence, and build operator trust in advanced mission autonomy

• Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Collaboration – Develop distributed optimization and task allocation approaches for heterogenous teaming in order to accomplish mission objectives by maximally utilizing the diverse capabilities of agents to overall team advantage

• Rigorous Software Development – Develop high-performance software modules that are well-tested, have clear interfaces and span-of-control, and are ready for mid-to-high Technology Readiness Level (TRL) insertions

• Cross-Functional Collaboration – Collaborate with cross-functional teams including perception, planning, simulation, hardware, and operational test to ensure seamless integration of autonomy solutions on real-world platforms

• Deployment & Test Support – Deploy autonomy capabilities to real surface vehicles, supporting integration and demonstration events as well as analysis of mission logs to verify software performance and validate system operational effect

• R&D and Road-mapping – Contribute to autonomy roadmaps by researching and prototyping new algorithms, identifying tactical capability gaps, and proposing novel solutions that advance Shield AI’s mission

• Travel Requirement – Members of this team typically travel around 25% of the year (to different office locations, customer sites, and flight integration events).

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 7 years with a PhD; or equivalent work experience.
• Proficiency in programming languages such as C++ and Python, and familiarity with real-time operating systems (RTOS).
• Significant background in robotics technologies related to motion planning, behavior modeling, decision-making, or autonomous system design. 
• Significant experience with unmanned system technologies and accompanying algorithms (ideally in the space domain specifically) 
• Experience with simulation tools and environments (e.g., AFSIM, NGTS) for testing and validation.
• Strong problem-solving skills, with the ability to troubleshoot and optimize system performance.
• Excellent communication and teamwork skills, with the ability to work effectively in a collaborative, multidisciplinary environment.
• Ability to obtain a SECRET clearance. 

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in multiple aerospace domains (e.g., air, land, sea, space)

• Experience across a breadth of methodologies from classical control through optimization and applied ML/RL

• Background in collaborative behaviors and swarm robotics

• Familiarity with domain-relevant DoD or government programs

• Hands-on experience supporting integration events, customer demos, and/or live exercises