Principal Engineer, Edge Applications & Mission Systems (R6245)
San Diego · USD 220,000-330,000 / year · 5+ years experience · Onsite · Posted Oct 17, 2026
At a glance
- Experience
- 5+ years experience
- Workplace
- Onsite
- Location
- San Diego
- Salary
- USD 220,000-330,000 / year
About the role
- Shield AI is seeking a Principal Engineer for Edge Applications & Mission Systems (R6245) to own platform architecture and define the architecture across operator applications, backend services, mission data, integration interfaces, and edge deployment environments.
Responsibilities
- Own the platform architecture, defining and evolving architecture across operator applications, backend services, mission data, integration interfaces, and edge deployment environments.
- Enable the full range of mission applications by guiding the evolution from single-vehicle GCS workflows to multi-vehicle supervision, heterogeneous fleet operations, and theater-level planning applications.
- Make customer extensibility a core capability by establishing APIs, SDKs, shared data models, extension mechanisms, and integration tooling.
- Lead C2 and BMS interoperability, guiding integration with external mission systems and defense C2 environments.
- Advance operator and agentic workflows by partnering with autonomy, AI, product, and design teams to deliver planning, supervision, execution, and debrief experiences.
- Own fleet and configuration architecture, establishing capabilities for asset inventory, readiness and health monitoring, software versioning, compatibility management, and controlled updates.
- Engineer for edge applications in contested environments, designing for intermittent connectivity, constrained bandwidth and compute, distributed state, and recovery from partial failures.
- Drive the technical roadmap and execution by translating product strategy, customer needs, and operational feedback into architectural priorities and deliverables.
- Lead products through customer deployment, partnering with integration, test, field, and customer teams from initial requirements through acceptance and sustainment.
Requirements
- 15+ years of professional software engineering experience, or an equivalent record of technical depth and impact, including substantial responsibility for complex production systems.
- 5+ years providing technical leadership as a technical lead, architect, Principal Engineer, or equivalent, with demonstrated influence across multiple teams and ownership of significant architectural decisions.
- Deep experience developing defense GCS and C2 applications, with working knowledge of mission planning, mission execution, operator workflows, and integration with broader battle-management environments.
- A demonstrated record of shipping and sustaining software products for defense customers, including responsibility for operational deployment, customer acceptance, and improvements informed by field use.
- Strong software architecture and implementation skills across distributed systems, application services, APIs, data management, and operator-facing software.
- Experience building extensible platforms used by multiple teams and external customers, including interface design, reusable capabilities, versioning, and integration across organizational boundaries.
- Experience with autonomous robotics applications, including fleet operations, configuration management, telemetry, and interactions between ground applications and platform-side autonomy.
- Strong understanding of networked systems and edge deployments, including performance, reliability, security, and behavior under limited or interrupted connectivity.
- Demonstrated ability to translate ambiguous customer and stakeholder needs into technical roadmaps, executable plans, and delivered capabilities; excellent written and verbal communication.
- Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Robotics, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
Preferred qualifications
- Direct experience developing or integrating platforms such as Lattice, other extensible defense C2/BMS products, or comparable mission-management systems.
- Experience with multi-domain operations, heterogeneous autonomous fleets, and the relationship between tactical GCS applications and higher-echelon mission systems.
- Experience delivering agentic or AI-assisted applications, including workflow orchestration, human-machine teaming, evaluation, and operator supervision.
- Experience with geospatial applications, common operational pictures, mission rehearsal, telemetry replay, or post-mission analysis.
- Experience with secure software delivery into defense environments, including collaboration with cybersecurity and authorization teams.
Benefits
- Bonus
- Benefits
- Equity
- temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment for temporary employees)
Skills
- Software Architecture
- Distributed Systems
- APIs
- SDKs
- Edge Deployment
- Fleet Operations
- Configuration Management
- Telemetry
- Mission Planning
