Principal Engineer, Ground System Software (R5199)

Principal Engineer, Ground System Software (R5199)

Washington, DC

X-BAT Division - X-BAT Engineering - Software /

Full Time Employee /

On-site

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Founded in 2015, 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 and V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft. 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. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube.

Job Description:

We are seeking an experienced Software Systems Engineer with a strong background in software design and development and a working knowledge of systems engineering processes, methodologies, and tools. This individual will play a key role in defining, developing, integrating, and validating complex software systems while ensuring alignment with system-level requirements, architecture, and program objectives.

The ideal candidate combines deep technical software expertise with an understanding of systems engineering principles, including requirements management, model-based systems engineering (MBSE), verification and validation, configuration management, customer communications and cross-functional technical leadership.

What you'll do:

Software Architecture & Development

• Participate in the development of software architectures for complex, distributed, and mission-critical systems.
• Engage in software design activities from concept through deployment and sustainment.
• Work with software responsible engineers to develop and model high-quality, scalable, maintainable software solutions using modern programming languages, frameworks & System Modeling Tools.
• Develop, review and maintain architecture diagrams to support government reference architectures.
• Engage with internal stakeholders to develop software architecture behavior diagrams/ documents to support customer deliverables.
• Communicate technical concepts effectively to engineering, program management, and customer stakeholders.

Systems Engineering Integration

• Collaborate with systems engineers to derive software requirements from system-level requirements and operational needs.
• Ensure software solutions maintain traceability to stakeholder, system, and subsystem requirements.
• Participate in architecture trade studies and technical decision-making activities.
• Support system decomposition, interface definition, and allocation of requirements.
• Contribute to system design reviews including SRR, PDR, CDR, TRR, and related technical milestones.
• Work closely with hardware, network, test, and integration teams to ensure end-to-end system performance.

Required qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related technical field.
• 8+ years of software engineering experience.
• 3+ years of software architecture or technical leadership experience.
• Proficiency in a strongly typed programming language (e.g. C#, TypeScript, Java, C++) with exposure to lower-level systems or protocol integration.
• Familiarity with software development lifecycle (SDLC) methodologies.
• Understanding of systems engineering processes and standards.
• Experience with requirements management and traceability practices.
• Experience using version control and CI/CD tools.

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience in aerospace, defense, robotics, autonomous systems, aviation, automotive, telecommunications, or other complex systems domains.

• Experience with GCS software, mission planning tools, or real-time visualization platforms.

• Familiarity with Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) methodologies.

• Experience with systems engineering tools such as:

• Cameo Systems Modeler / MagicDraw

• IBM DOORS Next

• Jama Connect

• Stell

• JIRA

• Confluence

• Experience with cloud-native architectures, containerization, and orchestration technologies.

• Familiarity with Autonomy Government Reference Architectures, Open Mission Systems and Universal Command & Control Interface.

Desired skills:

• Ability to operate effectively across multiple engineering disciplines.
• Strong systems thinking and problem-solving abilities.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to translate complex system requirements into practical software solutions.
• Experience balancing technical, programmatic, and operational constraints.
• Strong leadership and collaboration skills.
• Interface Control Documents (ICDs) development and management

$220,000 - $330,000 a year

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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 location. All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check. Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits. Please speak to your talent acquisition representative for more information.

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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, color, 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.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.

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