Shield AI
Staff Software Engineer, Perception (R5421)
Washington, D.C. · Staff · Full-time · Posted Oct 16, 2026
- Experience
- Typically 7 years with a Bachelor’s degree; or 6 years with a Master’s degree; or 4 years with a PhD; or equivalent work experience.
- Education
- Bachelor’s degree, Master’s degree, or PhD (experience alternatives are stated).
About the job
Leads development, evaluation, and deployment of vision and multimodal machine-learning models for perception in autonomous systems, translating research into production-ready capabilities.
What you'll do
- Design, train, fine-tune, and maintain vision, vision-language, and vision-language-action models, along with data pipelines and evaluation workflows.
- Deploy and optimize models for embedded hardware and integrate them into autonomous systems.
- Lead technical architecture and collaborate across teams while mentoring engineers.
What they ask for
- Expertise in machine-learning fundamentals; production experience training and deploying computer-vision models; strong understanding of 3D vision.
- Experience with PyTorch or TensorFlow and demonstrated expertise using TensorRT and ONNX.
- Proficiency in C++ and Python; strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to obtain a SECRET clearance.
Nice to have
- Experience developing autonomous systems for defense customers or training/fine-tuning vision-language, vision-language-action, or world models.
- Open-source contributions or publications in leading computer-vision and robotics venues.
Tools
PyTorch, TensorFlow, TensorRT, ONNX, C++, Python
AI focus
Develops vision, vision-language, and vision-language-action models for perception and decision-making in autonomous systems, including training, fine-tuning, evaluation, and embedded deployment.
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