Staff Engineer, Safety-Critical Software

About the role

The Safety-Critical Software Team within Shield AI's Hivemind Foundations group builds high‑assurance software that monitors and bounds autonomous mission‑autonomy systems to ensure safe flight. The team creates extensible Run‑Time Assurance (RTA) modules that meet strict airworthiness standards, enabling customers to certify autonomous solutions.

Key responsibilities

• Drive architecture, development, integration and testing of an extensible, configurable Run‑Time Assurance (RTA) module that ensures safe operation of autonomous systems in diverse, adversarial conditions.
• Collaborate with Foundations engineers to design and integrate the RTA capability with low‑assurance mission‑autonomy software and high‑assurance middleware.
• Specialize, integrate and test the RTA on a variety of platforms to guarantee robust fail‑safe behavior.
• Lead software development best practices, including code analysis, audit trails, and rigorous review processes.
• Produce certification artifacts such as static and dynamic analysis reports, architecture decision records, interface control diagrams, and system models.
• Mentor and guide developers on safe software development practices.

Required profile

• 10+ years of experience (or equivalent) with a Bachelor’s degree (or higher).
• Proven expertise designing and developing C++ safety‑critical software with real‑time guarantees.
• Experience mentoring engineers and driving software quality standards.
• Hands‑on integration of software on physical systems, improving performance and reliability.
• Strong knowledge of safety certifications such as DO‑178C and MIL‑HDBK‑516.

Required skills

• C++ (including advanced architecture design patterns).
• Real‑time systems development.
• Git and Linux development environments.
• CI/CD pipelines and test‑driven development.
• Safety certification standards: DO‑178C, MIL‑HDBK‑516, MISRA C++, JSF AV C++.