Principal Software Architect
Shield AI is a U.S. defense-technology company developing mission-autonomy software and autonomous aircraft for military and allied operations.
Funding history
Investors
About Shield AI
Founded in 2015, Shield AI builds Hivemind autonomy software and V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft for operations in contested, GPS- and communications-denied environments. Its current site also presents Aechelon synthetic-reality simulation and Vision Systems detection and tracking products.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will lead XBAT software architecture across mission, vehicle, autonomy, airborne, and ground-station systems. You will translate safety and security goals into engineering standards, align teams on interfaces and verification, govern architecture decisions, maintain architecture artifacts, evaluate technology, guide readiness reviews, and mentor senior engineers and architects.
Requirements
- Software architecture expertise for complex multi-domain systems
- Experience delivering production software with safety, security, or mission-assurance requirements
- Systems thinking across performance, latency, reliability, testability, and certification or compliance
- Written and verbal architecture communication
- Experience driving architecture adoption across multiple teams
- Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace, or related field, or equivalent experience
- Ability to obtain an S//SAR level security clearance desired
Responsibilities
- Define and evolve XBAT software architecture across airborne vehicle, ground station, and autonomy layers
- Translate safety and security goals into technical requirements, standards, and design patterns
- Formalize architecture decisions, traceability, and compliance pathways
- Align teams on APIs, data flows, fault handling, verification strategy, and risk management
- Set direction for modularity, maintainability, testability, scalability, and certification support
- Mentor senior engineers and architects
- Produce system diagrams, component interfaces, data models, risk analyses, and design rationales
- Lead technical reviews and enforce architectural standards
- Define architecture governance, decision records, change control, quality gates, and collaboration flows
- Manage system boundaries, timing, resource allocation, and failure modes with systems, hardware, and avionics functions
- Evaluate frameworks, middleware, and tooling
- Support readiness evaluations and provide architectural evidence
- Improve architecture practices, metrics, reviews, knowledge sharing, and onboarding
Benefits
- Bonus
- Benefits
- Equity