Job Description:This role is the team's primary interface between perception software and the flight test enterprise. You will work alongside autonomy/perception software developers, flight test engineers, and platform integration teams to mature our capabilities from algorithm to flight-verified system. The ideal candidate brings hands-on experience deploying and testing autonomy or perception software on edge hardware, a strong foundation in one or more core perception disciplines (detection, tracking, SLAM, or navigation), and a bias toward field execution over theoretical analysis.
What you'll do:- Integrate perception and state-estimation software with EO/IR cameras, IMU/GNSS/PNT sensors, embedded compute, and target or surrogate platforms.
- Lead the practical fly-fix-fly loop: prepare software and hardware, verify deployment/configuration, support execution, analyze the data, and drive the next corrective action with the responsible owners.
- Establish and improve calibration, timing, configuration, data-capture, metadata, and replay practices; define the measurable test objectives and acceptance criteria that make the resulting data usable.
- Investigate anomalous behavior using logs, recorded data, configuration, and focused source review; partner with software developers on targeted fixes and regression coverage.
- Support sensor and edge-compute trade studies, bring-up, and operational readiness; drive day-to-day technical triage while escalating safety, airworthiness, and architecture decisions appropriately.
Required qualifications:- Hands-on experience integrating and troubleshooting sensor-driven robotics or autonomy systems on physical hardware, including camera, IMU, GNSS/PNT, video, or comparable sensors.
- Experience with calibration, timestamping, configuration, data quality, or a comparable sensor-integration discipline.
- Experience defining and executing measurable test objectives, design-of-experiments activities, operational test procedures, or equivalent verification plans.
- Proficiency in Python/Matlab for analysis, visualization, and investigation of recorded test data.
- Comfort reading C++ and working with embedded Linux or edge-compute deployments to support focused debugging and integration work.
- Demonstrated ability to work across hardware, software, test, and operational stakeholders; working knowledge of at least one core perception area such as navigation, tracking, detection, navigation, SLAM, or sensor fusion.
Preferred qualifications:- Direct experience with camera intrinsics/extrinsics, camera-to-IMU calibration, time alignment, VIO/VBN, or other sensor-fusion systems in real-world testing.
- Familiarity with capture, replay, and analysis workflows, plus EO/IR camera, optics, video-metadata, or image-quality characterization.
- Experience with NVIDIA Jetson or comparable embedded GPU hardware, camera/video pipelines, and performance profiling.
- Background supporting aviation, maritime, UAS, automotive, industrial robotics, or another operational autonomy domain; familiarity with modern C++ build, deployment, or CI environments.
- This role is hybrid, based at Shield AI's San Diego, CA headquarters (three days per week in office), with periodic travel to flight test sites required.
Staff: 195,000-$290,000
Senior Staff: $230,000- $350,000
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