Senior Software Engineer – Navigation and State Estimation (R3123) - Shield AI

Job Title: Senior Software Engineer – Navigation and State Estimation (R3123)
Job Location: San Diego Metro Area
Job Listing URL: https://jobs.lever.co/shieldai/19cc4b14-c30b-4d25-b8b7-e814913eabb3
Job Description: Founded in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed defense technology company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent, autonomous systems. Its products include Hivemind Enterprise—EdgeOS, Pilot, Commander, and Forge—as well as V-BAT and Sentient Vision Systems (wide-area motion imaging software). With offices in San Diego, Dallas, Washington, D.C., Abu Dhabi (UAE), Kyiv (Ukraine), and Melbourne (Australia), Shield AI’s technology actively supports U.S. and allied operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X and Instagram.

Shield AI’s Hivemind autonomy team is building next-generation autonomy and navigation solutions for resilient, mission-critical systems. As a Senior Engineer, you will contribute directly to the design, development, integration, test, and deployment of the Hivemind navigation stack. We seek engineers with experience delivering robust navigation and state estimation solutions for defense aviation systems, ISR platforms, or other DoD-relevant applications, with strong expertise in C++ software development for embedded Linux systems.
What You'll Do:
Research and develop advanced state estimation and navigation algorithms to ensure assured Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) in contested environments.
Design, write, and deploy production-quality C++ software for aviation platforms requiring real-time, deterministic performance.
Build and maintain comprehensive unit, integration, and system-level tests to validate navigation software performance under operational constraints.
Develop modeling, calibration, and simulation tools for inertial and aided navigation technologies used in airborne platforms.
Participate in agile-based product planning, feature definition, capacity estimation, and cross-team collaboration.
Contribute to ongoing system performance evaluation, regression analysis, and V&V (Verification and Validation) efforts.
Required Qualifications:
Strong proficiency in modern C++ (C++11 or newer) and professional experience developing software for embedded Linux systems.
Experience designing and deploying state estimation algorithms (e.g., EKF, UKF) in real-world defense or aerospace applications.
Familiarity with developing for constrained environments requiring deterministic timing and high reliability.
Professional experience with continuous integration (CI) workflows and automated C++ testing.
Practical understanding of inertial navigation systems (INS), GNSS integration, and navigation error modeling.
Ability to deploy and maintain robust, efficient, production-level C++ code.
Familiarity with MATLAB or Python for prototyping is acceptable; however, primary development experience must be in C++.
Preferred Qualifications:
Experience developing and deploying assured PNT systems for DoD customers.
Expertise calibrating and integrating IMUs, GPS receivers, magnetometers, and barometric sensors.
Familiarity with alternative navigation techniques, such as celestial navigation, terrain-aided navigation, or vision-based navigation (VBN).
Experience validating and verifying navigation systems in operational test environments.
Note:
Candidates will be asked to complete a C++ coding exercise as part of the interview process to assess comfort with modern software design practices and system-level thinking.