Manager of Engineering - Autonomous Pilot Integration - Emerging Domains (R5176)

About the role

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:
The Autonomous Pilot Integration team for emerging domains builds autonomy solutions for new platforms and mission profiles outside Shield AI's established portfolios — including space (satellites, missile defense), maritime (USV and UUV integration), and contested logistics (unmanned helicopters and related autonomous resupply platforms). The team takes on short-term R&D and integration efforts — often standing up the first autonomy on a brand-new platform or for a brand-new mission — with the intent that successful efforts grow into larger, multi-year programs. We combine capabilities from the Autonomy Capabilities team (motion planning, tactics), the Perception team (e.g., ViDAR, ATR), and the HivemindSDK — selectively leveraging existing Shield AI autonomy solutions where they apply — to develop autonomy that runs on these new platforms. Our engineers write new autonomy code — such as mission behaviors, platform-specific control, multi-agent coordination, contingencies, and executive autonomy — and own it end-to-end from software-in-the-loop, to hardware-in-the-loop, to vehicle-in-the-loop, to live test exercise.
In this role, you'll lead a team of autonomy engineers tackling autonomy across Shield AI's emerging-domain efforts — owning their delivery, their growth, and the technical health of your area. A core part of the job is growing the team: hiring strong engineers, mentoring them through hard technical work, and shaping their career development. You'll stay technically active — writing code where it best serves the team, staying close to the integration work, making sound technical decisions, and leading them through the design, development, and delivery of efforts that may shift in shape, scope, and timeline. This role demands a problem solver who thrives in the unknown — you'll be standing up first autonomy on platforms that often don't have an established autopilot interface, mission autonomy, or operator base yet, and you'll be comfortable with priorities and deadlines that shift as programs mature. You'll partner closely with the platform teams that build each new piece of hardware (spacecraft, vessel, helicopter, etc.), the Autonomy Capabilities, Perception, and GCS teams, and customer/program offices on each effort. Success here means turning short-term R&D and integration efforts into longer-term programs that scale — with the growth opportunity, if desired, to lead the new portfolios that emerge from this work as they mature and graduate from emerging domains.