Senior Staff Software Engineer, Perception (R4985)
Model Development – Design, train, fine-tune, and maintain state-of-the-art vision, vision-language, and vision-language-action models that improve perception and decision-making for autonomous systems.
Data Pipelines & Model Training – Build scalable data pipelines, supervised fine-tuning (SFT) workflows, and evaluation loops that continuously improve model performance on mission-relevant tasks.
Model Deployment & Optimization – Deploy and optimize machine learning models for embedded hardware using technologies such as ONNX, TensorRT, and hardware-accelerated inference frameworks.
Perception & Autonomy Applications – Apply modern machine learning techniques to solve challenging perception and autonomy problems across aerial and other autonomous systems operating in complex, real-world environments.
Research-to-Production – Translate cutting-edge machine learning research into production-ready capabilities by balancing model performance, robustness, computational efficiency, and operational reliability.
Cross-functional Collaboration – Partner closely with perception, autonomy, platform, and software engineering teams to integrate machine learning capabilities into mission-ready autonomous systems.
Model Evaluation & Validation – Develop benchmarks, testing methodologies, and evaluation frameworks to measure model performance, identify failure modes, and guide future improvements.
Continuous Improvement – Improve training infrastructure, developer tooling, deployment workflows, and model lifecycle management to accelerate experimentation and production delivery.
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Typically requires a minimum of 10 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 9 years and a Master’s degree; or 7 years with a PhD; or equivalent work experience.
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Mastery of machine learning fundamentals.
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Experience training an deploying ML models for computer vision in a production setting.
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Strong understanding of 3D vision problems/algorithms.
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Experience with machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch and TensorFlow.
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Demonstrated expertise in deploying models using TensorRT and ONNX.
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Proficiency in C++ and Python.
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Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to translate research into practical applications.
- Ability to obtain a SECRET clearance
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Experience with developing autonomous systems for defense customers.
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Experience with training/finetuning vision-language models, vision-language-action models, and/or world models.
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Contributions to open-source projects in machine learning or computer vision.
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Track record of publications in leading computer vision and robotics conferences and journals (e.g., CVPR, ICCV/ECCV, RAL, ICRA).
- How much does the Senior Staff Software Engineer, Perception (R4985) at Shield AI pay?
- The posting lists a range of $234K–$351K per year. Ranges reflect what Shield AI publicly declared on the source posting.
- Where is this Senior Staff Software Engineer, Perception (R4985) role based?
- The role is based in Washington, DC.
- What experience does Shield AI expect for this role?
- The posting is tagged as a lead-level role, typically 7+ years of experience. Check the requirements section for specifics.
- Where is Shield AI headquartered?
- Shield AI is headquartered in San Diego, USA.
- How was this posting sourced?
- This role was pulled directly from Shield AI's Lever careers site. Apply links open in the employer's own ATS — no reposts or aggregator middleware.
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