Principal Engineer, Software Architect (R4562)

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 https://shield.ai/. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/shield-ai, X https://x.com/shieldaitech, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/shield_ai, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@Shield_AI. Lead the software architecture for Shield AI’s XBAT program across Mission, Vehicle, and Autonomy software domains. Build a safe, secure, and scalable architecture that enables high‑assurance, cyber‑relevant software development for an advanced airborne system and its ground stations, reporting to the XBAT Software Lead. WHAT YOU’LL DO: - - Define and evolve the system‑wide software architecture for XBAT, spanning airborne vehicle, ground station, and autonomy layers. - Translate safety and security goals into technical requirements, standards, and design patterns that guide engineers across multiple software teams. - Ensure architecture supports safety‑critical and cyber‑relevant workflows. This includes formalizing architecture decisions, traceability, and compliance pathways appropriate for advanced airborne systems. - Drive cross‑team alignment on APIs, data flows, fault handling, verification strategy, and risk management so mission, vehicle, and autonomy components integrate cleanly. - Partner with engineering leadership, system architects, and validation teams to balance innovation speed with rigorous assurance practices. - Set technical direction for long‑term scalability: modularity, maintainability, testability, and support for future capability growth or certification needs. - Mentor senior engineers and architects, raising the bar for design rigor, documentation quality, and architectural judgment across the organization. - Produce and maintain architecture artifacts: high‑level system diagrams, component interfaces, data models, risk analyses, and design rationales. - Lead technical reviews for major features, changes, or integration points; ensure alignment with architectural standards and safety/security constraints. - Define architecture governance: decision records, change control processes, quality gates, and collaboration flows among development, verification, and operations. - Collaborate with systems, hardware, and avionics teams to manage boundaries, timing, resource allocation, and failure modes that affect overall aircraft and mission performance. - Drive technology evaluation and roadmap: select or validate frameworks, middleware, and tooling that meet performance, assurance, and cyber‑hardening needs. - Support external or internal readiness evaluations: provide architectural evidence, participate in reviews, and help the program articulate compliance posture as requirements evolve. - Advocate for continuous improvement in architecture practice: metrics, architecture reviews, knowledge sharing, and onboarding for new team members. REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS: - - Deep expertise in software architecture for complex, multi‑domain systems—ideally aerospace, defense, autonomous systems, or similarly safety‑critical fields. - Proven track record designing and delivering production software that must satisfy stringent safety, security, or mission assurance requirements. - Strong systems thinking: able to navigate tradeoffs across performance, latency, reliability, testability, and certification or compliance considerations. - Excellent written and verbal communication; able to convey architecture vision and rationale to engineers, program leads, and stakeholders. - Experience driving architecture adoption and discipline across multiple teams, not just authoring designs in isolation. - Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace, or a closely related field, or equivalent practical experience. - Ability to obtain a S//SAR level security clearance desired. PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS: - - Familiarity with aerospace software assurance frameworks or standards that guide high‑assurance airborne software development. - Experience working on or integrating autonomy, mission planning, or AI‑enabled software into real‑world systems. - Strong understanding of cyber hardening and secure design practices for distributed or networked vehicle systems and ground infrastructure. - Prior leadership or mentor role with responsibility for building and scaling architecture practices and design culture in a fast‑moving engineering organization. - Experience dealing with constrained platforms: real‑time requirements, limited compute, or avionics‑style integration challenges. - Hands‑on experience in VTOL or other advanced aircraft programs, or in programs that require austere operations, long‑range operations, or resilient autonomy. - Exposure to end‑to‑end product lifecycle from concept through flight test or operational deployment. - Practical knowledge of modern software tooling that supports traceability, CI/CD, automated verification, static analysis, or high‑assurance pipelines. - Comfort working in a highly collaborative, fast‑paced environment where requirements can evolve quickly and architecture must adapt without losing rigor. Full-time regular employee offer package: 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 locat