Staff Engineer, State Estimation

Description:

Shield AI is a venture-backed defence technology company building intelligent autonomous systems for aircraft. Our mission is to protect service members and civilians through AI and autonomy.
Founded in 2015, Shield AI’s flagship autonomy software, Hivemind, powers aircraft, drones, and other platforms to perform complex missions with high reliability in contested environments.
For more information, visit www.shield.ai and follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X (Twitter), and Instagram.What You'll Do:

• Integrate Shield AI’s software with mission systems delivering perception and state estimation outputs.
• Develop production-quality C++ software for advanced autonomous systems.
• Write and maintain test code to validate and benchmark algorithms.
• Collaborate with hardware and test teams to validate perception and state estimation algorithms on aerial platforms.
• Create tools and analysers to ingest and evaluate sensor data, producing key metrics to ensure system reliability.
• Enhance sensor models in high-fidelity simulation environments for rigorous testing.
• Work in a fast-paced, collaborative environment, contributing to continuous development and integration cycles.

What You'll Bring:

• Significant relevant experience in perception, state estimation or robotics software.
• Strong C++ development experience, with a focus on production-level software and object-oriented programming (OOP).
• Ability to develop, benchmark, debug, and deploy software algorithms efficiently.
• Practical experience integrating and working with sensor payloads, particularly in defence or aerospace (DoD) environments.
• Experience with sensor fusion for noisy, high-bandwidth sensors on compute-constrained systems.
• Solid foundation in controls, state estimation, probabilistic robotics, and signal processing theory.
• Comfortable working within Unix/Linux development environments.

Bonus Points For:

• Familiarity with Kalman Filters, Factor Graphs, and other state estimation frameworks.
• Experience in robotics autonomy development, including task planning and behaviour algorithms.
• Understanding of unmanned system technologies and autonomy algorithms, especially in the air domain.
• Experience with high-fidelity simulation and sensor modelling tools.
• Proven capability developing object detection and recognition pipelines.
• Strong background in system architecture design and understanding of air-vehicle physics and motion models.
• Familiarity with Git source control and modern software engineering processes.
• Understanding of air-vehicle dynamics and motion models.

Why Shield AI?

• Work on mission-critical AI and autonomy systems solving real-world defence and security challenges.
• Join a high-performing, collaborative engineering team working at the cutting edge of technology.
• Enjoy a flexible, supportive work environment - our office is located in Port Melbourne, close to Melbourne CBD.
• Salary + equity for permanent roles, with flexible working options available.

Help us redefine what’s possible in autonomous defence — apply today!
Shield AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, colour, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.