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Mission Systems Software Engineer (R5888)

Shield AI· X-BAT Division – X-BAT Engineering - Software
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Hybrid (Dallas, TX and Seattle, WA)$135k - $250kFull Time EmployeePosted 1mo ago

About the role

Mission Systems Software Engineer to develop real-time software architecture for autonomous aircraft, integrating sensors, navigation, autonomy, and mission management across hardware and software teams; from PDR to fielding with emphasis on deterministic real-time performance, safety-critical requirements, and system lifecycle ownership.

Responsibilities

  • 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.

Qualifications

  • Senior: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field with 5+ years of professional software-engineering experience, including 1+ years in software architecture, systems architecture, or technical leadership.
  • Staff: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field with 8+ years of professional software-engineering experience, including 3+ years in software architecture, systems architecture, or technical leadership.
  • Senior Staff: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field with 10+ years of professional software-engineering experience, including 5+ 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 obtain and maintain a U.S. Department of Defense security clearance; U.S. citizenship may be required for clearance eligibility.

Skills

Required:Real-time software architectureC/C++/RustEmbedded systems / RTOSSystems engineering

Benefits

  • Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity
  • 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.
Last updated Oct 23, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Shield AI

Autonomy for the world.

Our mission is to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems.

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