Staff Engineer, Mission Systems Software (R5888)

The Mission Systems Software Engineer will work on developing solutions of a real time system environment to provide mission computing support at the center of an autonomous aircraft with sensor and weapons. This role will work to establish a software architecture for a real time system that operates in a multi-level environment at real time. The role will require work with hardware, software and systems teams to come to a consensus design. This role will focus on development of new systems and software designs from PDR, CoDR, CDR to lab test, flight test and fielding.

What you’ll do:

• Serve as a software mission systems engineer for a safety- and mission-critical real-time mission-computing system aligned with A-GRA and AMS-GRA principles, profiles, interfaces, and data standards.
• Define and maintain the end-to-end software architecture, including mission applications, platform services, middleware, operating-system interfaces, hardware-abstraction layers, networking, data distribution, component boundaries, and APIs.
• Architect for deterministic real-time performance by addressing scheduling, latency, jitter, synchronization, throughput, resource utilization, distributed processing, and CPU/GPU/accelerator allocation.
• Develop architecture views, interface definitions, data-flow and deployment models, sequence and timing diagrams, resource budgets, trade studies, and technical decision records.
• Integrate sensors, effectors, communications, navigation, autonomy, mission management, command-and-control, data-processing, and vehicle services in collaboration with hardware, FPGA, cybersecurity, safety, systems, integration, and test teams.
• Design for mission resilience and assurance through fault detection and isolation, redundancy, graceful degradation, recovery, health monitoring, cybersecurity, airworthiness, certification, and requirements traceability.
• Establish engineering practices for concurrency, synchronization, memory and resource management, deterministic execution, interface control, configuration management, and predictable component integration.
• Define and execute verification strategies across HIL/SIL laboratories, simulations, test benches, flight-test environments, and deployed systems using automated, performance, stress, fault-injection, interface, and timing tests.
• Maintain technical ownership throughout the system lifecycle by evaluating enabling technologies and supplier designs, analyzing performance, managing technical debt and modernization roadmaps, promoting reuse, and communicating architectural decisions.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field.
• 8+ years of professional software-engineering experience, including 3+ years in software architecture, systems architecture, or technical leadership.
• Experience developing embedded, distributed, real-time, safety-critical, or mission-critical software systems.
• Proficiency in C, C++, Rust, or another strongly typed systems-programming language.
• Strong understanding of real-time software principles, including scheduling, concurrency, synchronization, latency, jitter, memory management, and deterministic execution.
• Experience with embedded operating systems or RTOSs, middleware, interprocess communication, networking, and data-distribution technologies.
• Experience defining software architectures, APIs, interface-control documents, data flows, deployment models, and system resource budgets.
• Experience integrating software with hardware, sensors, communications systems, navigation systems, effectors, or other mission-system components.
• Experience supporting software through requirements development, design reviews, implementation, integration, verification, system test, and deployment.
• Working knowledge of systems-engineering processes, requirements management, traceability, configuration management, and verification and validation.
• Ability to analyze system performance using instrumentation, telemetry, traces, profiling, network captures, timing data, and resource-utilization measurements.
• Strong cross-functional technical leadership, problem-solving, written communication, and presentation skills.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Department of Defense security clearance; U.S. citizenship may be required for clearance eligibility., * Experience developing software for autonomous aircraft, unmanned aircraft systems, avionics, mission computers, robotics, or aerospace and defense platforms.
• Experience with A-GRA, AMS-GRA, OMS, UCI, FACE, or other government reference architectures and open-mission-system standards.
• Experience integrating autonomy, mission management, command-and-control, sensor processing, communications, navigation, and effector capabilities.
• Familiarity with airworthiness, safety-assurance, or certification standards such as DO-178C, DO-254, ARP4754A, or applicable military airworthiness guidance.
• Experience with CPU-, GPU-, FPGA-, or accelerator-based heterogeneous computing architectures.
• Experience with publish/subscribe middleware, quality-of-service controls, high-rate data distribution, precision timing, and distributed time synchronization.
• Experience designing cybersecurity controls for embedded or mission systems, including trust boundaries, least privilege, authentication, authorization, secure communications, and software integrity.
• Experience with HIL/SIL environments, simulation systems, laboratory integration, flight testing, or operational deployment.
• Experience evaluating supplier designs, RTOSs, middleware, computing platforms, or third-party software for architectural compliance and integration readiness.
• Active or previously held U.S. Department of Defense Secret clearance.

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.

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 .