Role details
$230,000 – $350,000
Job description
Job Description:
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
Role context
This Autonomy & Perception Integration Engineer - Flight Test (R5441) role at Shield AI sits in the testing track within defense and autonomy. The position is tied to San Diego, California, United States and is posted earlier in the current hiring cycle, which signals active hiring intent rather than archived demand. Compensation is disclosed as $230,000 – $350,000, which improves comparability for candidates reviewing similar listings. Combined with the live company and role links on this page, this listing gives candidates a direct path to compare equivalent openings by employer, market, and role focus.
Ready for the next step?
Apply directly with Shield Ai
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Location
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San Diego, California, United States
Location
San Diego, California, United States
Approximate role location based on the employer listing.
San Diego, California, United States
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