Mission Systems Software Engineer - BlueSky

About the role

Shield AI, a defense-tech company, is hiring a Mission Systems Software Engineer for its BlueSky program. The engineer develops real-time mission-computing solutions for an autonomous aircraft with sensors and weapons, establishing a software architecture that works in a multi-level real-time environment. The role spans the full lifecycle, from PDR, CoDR and CDR through lab test, flight test and fielding.

Key responsibilities

• Serve as software mission systems engineer for a safety- and mission-critical real-time 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, OS interfaces, hardware abstraction layers, networking, data distribution, component boundaries and APIs.
• Architect for deterministic real-time performance, covering scheduling, latency, jitter, synchronization, throughput, resource utilization and CPU/GPU/accelerator allocation.
• Produce 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 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.
• Set engineering practices for concurrency, synchronization, memory and resource management, deterministic execution, interface control, configuration management and component integration.
• Run verification strategies across HIL/SIL labs, simulations, test benches, flight-test environments and deployed systems, using automated, performance, stress, fault-injection, interface and timing tests.
• Maintain technical ownership by evaluating enabling technologies and supplier designs, managing technical debt and modernization roadmaps, and communicating architectural decisions.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering or a related field.
• 8+ years of professional software-engineering experience, including 3+ years in software architecture, systems architecture or technical leadership.
• Experience with embedded, distributed, real-time, safety-critical or mission-critical software systems.
• Experience integrating software with hardware, sensors, communications, navigation, effectors and other mission components.
• Experience supporting software through requirements, design reviews, implementation, integration, verification, system test and deployment.
• Knowledge of systems-engineering processes, requirements management, traceability, configuration management and V&V.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Department of Defense security clearance; U.S. citizenship may be required.

Required skills

• Proficiency in C, C++, Rust or another strongly typed systems programming language.
• Understanding of real-time software principles: scheduling, concurrency, synchronization, latency, jitter, memory management and deterministic execution.
• Embedded operating systems or RTOSs, middleware, interprocess communication, networking and data-distribution technologies.
• Defining software architectures, APIs, interface-control documents, data flows, deployment models and resource budgets.
• Analyzing system performance with instrumentation, telemetry, traces, profiling, network captures and timing data.

Preferred: experience with autonomous aircraft, unmanned systems, avionics, mission computers, robotics or aerospace platforms; A-GRA, AMS-GRA, OMS, UCI, FACE or similar reference architectures; airworthiness standards such as DO-178C, DO-254, ARP4754A; heterogeneous computing (CPU, GPU, FPGA, accelerators); publish/subscribe middleware, QoS, high-rate data distribution, precision timing and distributed time synchronization; cybersecurity controls for embedded systems; HIL/SIL, simulation, flight testing and deployment; supplier evaluation; active or former DoD Secret clearance.