
Staff Engineer, Aircraft Trajectory Modeling (R5787)
Shield AI
San Diego, United States · Full time employee · Autonomy, Planning & Controls
Job Description: Shield AI is seeking a Staff Engineer to help design, develop, and integrate a safety critical Run-Time Assurance (RTA) product.
Apply on Shield AI’s careers page- Company
- Shield AI
- Location
- San Diego, United States
- Workplace
- On-site
- Type
- Full time employee
- Level
- Staff / Principal
- Specialism
- Autonomy, Planning & Controls
- Team
- Engineering
- Salary
- $200K–$300K
- Posted
- 26 September 2026
About the role
Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, Shield AI’s technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube. Job Description: Shield AI is seeking a Staff Engineer to help design, develop, and integrate a safety critical Run-Time Assurance (RTA) product. The Hivemind Foundations team is responsible for a suite of core products and capabilities that brings resilient autonomy and intelligence to aircraft and other platforms operating in complex environments. The RTA product that the Foundations team develops is a real-time safety capability that helps keep autonomy safe, predictable, and effective at the edge. As a senior member of the Hivemind Foundations team, you will lead applied trajectory prediction and aircraft-response modeling for the RTA. You will work at the boundary between safety logic, vehicle state, and autopilot or flight-control APIs, turning aircraft performance data, command-response assumptions, and test evidence into predictive models that guide safe recovery behavior. You will evolve Trajectory Prediction Algorithm (TPA) models, validate them with Python, simulation, HIL, and flight-test data, and partner with C/C++ engineers to deliver reliable software that can fly, including support for X-BAT, Shield AI's flagship Group 5 Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) UAV.