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Staff Engineer, Hivemind Reasoning (R6292)

Shield AI· Hivemind Enterprise Division – Engineering
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San Mateo, California$240k - $360kFull Time EmployeePosted 1w ago

About the role

Senior technical role focused on designing, training, adapting, and evaluating reasoning and cognition models for unmanned autonomous systems across aerial, maritime, land, and space domains, with edge constraints and collaboration across perception, MLOps, simulation, autonomy, and inference teams.

Responsibilities

  • Design, implement, train, adapt, and evaluate reasoning and cognition models for unmanned autonomous platforms.
  • Make and validate tradeoffs among foundation-model approaches, including vision-language models (VLMs) and vision-language-action models (VLAs), specialized deep-learning models, and traditional AI/ML methods.
  • Develop capabilities for interpreting context, reasoning over time, coordinating among agents, and adapting to incomplete or changing information.
  • Build reproducible training and adaptation workflows using appropriate combinations of self-supervised learning, supervised fine-tuning, imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and distillation.
  • Define data requirements, training objectives, benchmarks, and evaluation methods that support meaningful comparisons among model approaches.
  • Establish rigorous evaluations in simulation and with real-world data, measuring generalization, robustness, uncertainty, and performance as team size and operating conditions change.
  • Incorporate edge constraints into model architecture and training decisions in partnership with hardware, autonomy, and inference teams.
  • Diagnose model failures and create feedback loops among data curation, training experiments, and re-evaluation.
  • Deliver trained models, reproducible results, and clear performance evidence to partner teams.
  • Communicate technical tradeoffs, experimental findings, and model limitations clearly to research, engineering, product, and organizational leadership.

Qualifications

  • BS/MS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or equivalent practical experience (typical experience: 7+ years with Bachelor’s; 6 years with Master’s; 4 years with PhD).
  • A demonstrated track record of developing and deploying advanced ML models in production environments, with substantial hands-on contributions to model design, training, and evaluation.
  • Deep expertise in foundation models, modern deep learning, model architectures, and the training ecosystem.
  • Strong command of training and adaptation approaches such as self-supervised learning, supervised fine-tuning, imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and distillation.
  • Experience defining datasets, training objectives, experimental workflows, benchmarks, and reproducible criteria for comparing models.
  • Fluency in traditional AI/ML techniques and ability to combine them with learned models.
  • Experience with training frameworks such as PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow, etc.
  • Experience with multimodal, embodied, robotic, or autonomous-system models; familiarity with VLA models and world models is relevant.
  • Familiarity with traditional robotics algorithms (path planning, probabilistic modeling, optimization).
  • Familiarity with NVIDIA Jetson and other edge compute platforms (e.g., Qualcomm, AMD).

Skills

Required:Reasoning and cognition model designFoundation models and modern deep learningTraining frameworks

Benefits

  • Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity
  • Temporary benefits package after 60 days for temporary employees
Last updated Oct 23, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

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