Senior Engineer, Research-to-Product Perception (R6022)

San Diego · USD 165,000-300,000 / year · Onsite · Posted Oct 3, 2026

At a glance

Shield AI is seeking a Staff Engineer for the Hivemind Detection, Tracking, and Mapping (DTM) team to develop perception capabilities from algorithms and production C++ libraries.
This is a full-stack perception product-development role focused on turning prototypes, research, and partner-developed technology into reusable, configurable, and well-tested product capabilities.

Evaluate emerging models and methods against representative sensor data and autonomy needs.
Build prototypes and experiments that reveal strengths, limitations, and practical deployment opportunities.
Combine learned and classical approaches to improve detection, tracking, geometric vision, or sensor fusion.
Optimize and integrate capabilities for edge deployment, contributing Python and C++ software with support from experienced product engineers.
Help deliver tested, documented capabilities and stay involved as other teams adopt them.

A PhD in computer vision, machine learning (ML/DL), robotics, or a related field, or an equivalent record of advanced research and hands-on engineering.
Research depth in an area such as multimodal vision, visual foundation models, video understanding, open-vocabulary perception, or embodied learning.
Strong Python skills and experience with PyTorch or a comparable ML framework.
A thoughtful approach to experiments, evaluation data, and understanding why models fail.
Experience building substantial research software, an interest in developing production-quality C++, and a collaborative approach to solving problems.

Experience bringing a research prototype into sustained use.
Experience with robotics, real sensors, temporal data, or multi-sensor perception.
Familiarity with vision-language models, vision-language-action models, or embodied AI.
Experience with C++, edge inference, or model optimization using tools such as ONNX, TensorRT, or CUDA.