Dallas, United States
Mission Systems Software Engineer - R5888
Shield AI · Dallas · United States
Posted: 9/10/2026 · Last checked: 10/12/2026
Job description
Quoted in full from Shield AI's job posting. Gavroche does not edit it.
Job Description:
The Mission Systems Software Engineer will work on developing solutions of a real time system environment to provide mission computing support at the center of an autonomous aircraft with sensor and weapons. This role will work to establish a software architecture for a real time system that operates in a multi-level environment at real time. The role will require work with hardware, software and systems teams to come to a consensus design. This role will focus on development of new systems and software designs from PDR, CoDR, CDR to lab test, flight test and fielding.
What you'll do:
- Serve as a software mission systems engineer for a safety- and mission-critical real-time mission-computing system aligned with A-GRA and AMS-GRA principles, profiles, interfaces, and data standards.
- Define and maintain the end-to-end software architecture, including mission applications, platform services, middleware, operating-system interfaces, hardware-abstraction layers, networking, data distribution, component boundaries, and APIs.
- Architect for deterministic real-time performance by addressing scheduling, latency, jitter, synchronization, throughput, resource utilization, distributed processing, and CPU/GPU/accelerator allocation.
- Develop architecture views, interface definitions, data-flow and deployment models, sequence and timing diagrams, resource budgets, trade studies, and technical decision records.
- Integrate sensors, effectors, communications, navigation, autonomy, mission management, command-and-control, data-processing, and vehicle services in collaboration with hardware, FPGA, cybersecurity, safety, systems, integration, and test teams.
- Design for mission resilience and assurance through fault detection and isolation, redundancy, graceful degradation, recovery, health monitoring, cybersecurity, airworthiness, certification, and requirements traceability.
- Establish engineering practices for concurrency, synchronization, memory and resource management, deterministic execution, interface control, configuration management, and predictable component integration.
- Define and execute verification strategies across HIL/SIL laboratories, simulations, test benches, flight-test environments, and deployed systems using automated, performance, stress, fault-injection, interface, and timing tests.
- Maintain technical ownership throughout the system lifecycle by evaluating enabling technologies and supplier designs, analyzing performance, managing technical debt and modernization roadmaps, promoting reuse, and communicating architectural decisions.
Required qualifications:
- Senior: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field with 5+ years of professional software-engineering experience, including 1+ years in software architecture, systems architecture, or technical leadership.
- Staff: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field with 8+ years of professional software-engineering experience, including 3+ years in software architecture, systems architecture, or technical leadership.
- Senior Staff: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field with 10+ years of professional software-engineering experience, including 5+ years in software architecture, systems architecture, or technical leadership.
- Experience developing embedded, distributed, real-time, safety-critical, or mission-critical software systems.
- Proficiency in C, C++, Rust, or another strongly typed systems-programming language.
- Strong understanding of real-time software principles, including scheduling, concurrency, synchronization, latency, jitter, memory management, and deterministic execution.
- Experience with embedded operating systems or RTOSs, middleware, interprocess communication, networking, and data-distribution technologies.
- Experience defining software architectures, APIs, interface-control documents, data flows, deployment models, and system resource budgets.
- Experience integrating software with hardware, sensors, communications systems, navigation systems, effectors, or other mission-system components.
- Experience supporting software through requirements development, design reviews, implementation, integration, verification, system test, and deployment.
- Working knowledge of systems-engineering processes, requirements management, traceability, configuration management, and verification and validation.
- Ability to analyze system performance using instrumentation, telemetry, traces, profiling, network captures, timing data, and resource-utilization measurements.
- Strong cross-functional technical leadership, problem-solving, written communication, and presentation skills.
- Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Department of Defense security clearance; U.S. citizenship may be required for clearance eligibility.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience developing software for autonomous aircraft, unmanned aircraft systems, avionics, mission computers, robotics, or aerospace and defense platforms.
- Experience with A-GRA, AMS-GRA, OMS, UCI, FACE, or other government reference architectures and open-mission-system standards.
- Experience integrating autonomy, mission management, command-and-control, sensor processing, communications, navigation, and effector capabilities.
- Familiarity with airworthiness, safety-assurance, or certification standards such as DO-178C, DO-254, ARP4754A, or applicable military airworthiness guidance.
- Experience with CPU-, GPU-, FPGA-, or accelerator-based heterogeneous computing architectures.
- Experience with publish/subscribe middleware, quality-of-service controls, high-rate data distribution, precision timing, and distributed time synchronization.
- Experience designing cybersecurity controls for embedded or mission systems, including trust boundaries, least privilege, authentication, authorization, secure communications, and software integrity.
- Experience with HIL/SIL environments, simulation systems, laboratory integration, flight testing, or operational deployment.
- Experience evaluating supplier designs, RTOSs, middleware, computing platforms, or third-party software for architectural compliance and integration readiness.
- Active or previously held U.S. Department of Defense Secret clearance.
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