Autonomy & Perception Integration Engineer - Flight Test (R5441)
San Diego, CA, USA
USD 195k-350k / year + Equity
Posted on Jul 24, 2026
Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, Shield AI’s technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube.
Job Description:
This role is the team's primary interface between perception software and the flight test enterprise. You will work alongside autonomy/perception software developers, flight test engineers, and platform integration teams to mature our capabilities from algorithm to flight-verified system. The ideal candidate brings hands-on experience deploying and testing autonomy or perception software on edge hardware, a strong foundation in one or more core perception disciplines (detection, tracking, SLAM, or navigation), and a bias toward field execution over theoretical analysis.
What you'll do:
- Integrate perception and state-estimation software with EO/IR cameras, IMU/GNSS/PNT sensors, embedded compute, and target or surrogate platforms.
- Lead the practical fly-fix-fly loop: prepare software and hardware, verify deployment/configuration, support execution, analyze the data, and drive the next corrective action with the responsible owners.
- Establish and improve calibration, timing, configuration, data-capture, metadata, and replay practices; define the measurable test objectives and acceptance criteria that make the resulting data usable.
- Investigate anomalous behavior using logs, recorded data, configuration, and focused source review; partner with software developers on targeted fixes and regression coverage.
- Support sensor and edge-compute trade studies, bring-up, and operational readiness; drive day-to-day technical triage while escalating safety, airworthiness, and architecture decisions appropriately.
Required qualifications:
- Hands-on experience integrating and troubleshooting sensor-driven robotics or autonomy systems on physical hardware, including camera, IMU, GNSS/PNT, video, or comparable sensors.
- Experience with calibration, timestamping, configuration, data quality, or a comparable sensor-integration discipline.
- Experience defining and executing measurable test objectives, design-of-experiments activities, operational test procedures, or equivalent verification plans.
- Proficiency in Python/Matlab for analysis, visualization, and investigation of recorded test data.
- Comfort reading C++ and working with embedded Linux or edge-compute deployments to support focused debugging and integration work.
- Demonstrated ability to work across hardware, software, test, and operational stakeholders; working knowledge of at least one core perception area such as navigation, tracking, detection, navigation, SLAM, or sensor fusion.
Preferred qualifications:
- Direct experience with camera intrinsics/extrinsics, camera-to-IMU calibration, time alignment, VIO/VBN, or other sensor-fusion systems in real-world testing.
- Familiarity with capture, replay, and analysis workflows, plus EO/IR camera, optics, video-metadata, or image-quality characterization.
- Experience with NVIDIA Jetson or comparable embedded GPU hardware, camera/video pipelines, and performance profiling.
- Background supporting aviation, maritime, UAS, automotive, industrial robotics, or another operational autonomy domain; familiarity with modern C++ build, deployment, or CI environments.
This role is hybrid, based at Shield AI's San Diego, CA headquarters (three days per week in office), with periodic travel to flight test sites required.
Staff: 195,000-$290,000
Senior Staff: $230,000- $350,000
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Full-time regular employee offer package:
Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity
Temporary employee offer package:
Pay within range listed above + temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)
Salary compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, licenses and certifications, and specific work location. All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check. Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits. Please speak to your talent acquisition representative for more information.
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Shield AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.
195000 - 350000 USD a year