Staff Autonomy Engineer- Behavior and Motion Planning (R6007)

• - Research, design, and implement state-of-the-art algorithms for autonomous trajectory planning

and control for single and multi-agent systems.

• Build reliable, robust, and maintainable software, primarily in modern C++, with Python used for

prototyping, analysis, automation, and testing.

• Develop comprehensive tests and evaluate planning stack performance in simulation and, where

applicable, on real hardware.

• Diagnose complex algorithmic and software failures, including concurrency, performance, and

integration issues.

• Collaborate with teams across the organization to refine requirements and deliver capabilities

• - Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, applied mathematics, operations research, or

a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• Demonstrated experience through professional work, internships, research, or substantial projects

building, testing, and debugging nontrivial C++ software for optimization, motion planning, robotics, autonomous systems, or a closely related algorithmic domain.

• Experience writing and debugging modern C++, including safe use of common concurrency patterns

and the ability to diagnose issues such as data races, deadlocks, and lifetime errors.

• Working experience with Python for prototyping, analysis, automation, or testing.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including algorithms, data structures, testing,

debugging, version control, CI/CD, and maintainable software design.

• Practical experience developing and debugging software on Linux.
• Ability to communicate technical decisions and collaborate effectively across disciplines.
• For senior-level candidates: Master's degree in computer science, Robotics, or a related field

and 5+ years of relevant professional experience or PhD with 4+ years of relevant experience.

Ways to stand out

• - Experience with behavior/motion planning for any platform (aerial, maritime, space, or ground),

working on decentralized or distributed planning for multi-agent systems, or trajectory optimization.

• Experience working on multi-objective optimization problems.
• Experience using solvers such as Gurobi, OR-Tools, or CPLEX.
• Experience applying VLMs or VLAs to motion planning, reasoning, tool use, or autonomous decision-

making in safety critical systems.

• Experience delivering software for fielded, real-time, safety-critical, or resource-constrained

autonomous systems.

• Experience with software-in-the-loop or hardware-in-the-loop simulation, performance profiling,

or distributed systems.

• Evidence of relevant technical depth through fielded systems, applied research, publications,

open-source contributions, or robotics and autonomy competitions.

#LD

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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• Contribute to the design and architecture of scalable, maintainable autonomy and software

architecture.

• Take new product features from ideation to verification, to flight testing, and all the way to

maturation.

• Mentor and provide technical guidance to junior engineers.
• Stay current with the latest advancements in robotics, and apply them to solve challenging

problems.

• - Motion planning that produces safe, dynamically feasible behavior under real-world constraints.
• Collaborative and distributed motion planning for multi-agent scenarios.
• Effects and action planning that connects mission intent to executable autonomous behaviors.
• Incorporating various types of motion and dynamics models into the planning stack.
• Write software that allows the customer to interact with payloads safely.
• Planning approaches that incorporate vision-language models (VLMs), vision-language-action models

(VLAs), or other learned components.

• Validate the planning stack using software-, hardware-, and vehicle-in-the-loop simulation of

complex autonomous missions.

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 https://shield.ai/.

Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/shield-ai, X https://x.com/shieldaitech, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/shield_ai, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@Shield_AI.