Staff Engineer, HMI for Autonomous Systems

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, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. 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 . Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn , X , Instagram , and YouTube .

Job Description:

We're looking for an experiencedStaff Engineer, Human Machine Interface to join our Hivemind Solutions team and lead the development of operator-facing software for autonomous uncrewed systems.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role spanning HMI, mission systems, and autonomous-platform integration. You will help build the ground-control, mission-planning, command-and-control, and debrief tools through which operators understand, supervise, and control complex autonomous systems.

You will bring strong frontend engineering experience across modern web and/or desktop technologies, supported by practical C++ and backend or distributed-systems foundations. You will work closely with autonomy, systems, flight-test, product, and operational teams to turn sophisticated platform capabilities into clear, responsive, and mission-effective operator experiences.

What you'll do:

• Lead technical direction and architecture for HMI capabilities across Hivemind Solutions products.
• Design and deliver applications for mission planning, command and control, vehicle and payload supervision, system health, and post-mission debrief.
• Build map-centric and data-rich interfaces that clearly convey vehicle state, autonomy intent, mission status, constraints, alerts, and degraded conditions.
• Develop HMI using appropriate frontend technologies, including web frameworks such as React and TypeScript, and native desktop frameworks such as Qt/QML where appropriate.
• Design robust data flows and interfaces between frontends, C++ services, backend systems, autonomy software, vehicle interfaces, simulation, payloads, telemetry, and video sources.
• Define and negotiate APIs, data models, schemas, interface contracts, and ICDs with internal teams and external partners.
• Lead technical design reviews, code reviews, architecture decisions, and engineering practices for quality, performance, maintainability, and release readiness.
• Support simulation, operator-in-the-loop testing, system integration, flight test, field activity, and customer demonstrations.
• Debug complex HMI and mission-system issues spanning application performance, memory use, data freshness, networking, messaging, video, and vehicle integration.
• Mentor engineers and provide technical leadership across frontend, HMI, and mission-system software.

Required qualifications:

• A tertiary qualification in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Robotics, Mechatronics, or a related discipline;
• Significant professional experience delivering complex user-facing software, ideally as a staff, principal, lead, or senior technical engineer.
• Strong experience with one or more modern HMI/frontend technology stacks, such as React, TypeScript, HTML/CSS, Qt/QML, or comparable web and desktop frameworks.
• Strong C++ fundamentals and experience contributing to production native software, backend services, integrations, or performance-sensitive systems.
• Experience with APIs, distributed systems, asynchronous data flows, messaging, service integration, data models, and client/server architectures.
• Experience developing interfaces that consume real-time, operationally significant, or high-rate data.
• Demonstrated experience owning software capabilities from architecture through integration, testing, deployment, and operational support.
• Strong debugging, profiling, technical communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Experience mentoring engineers and leading technical decisions.
• Ability to obtain and maintain an Australian Government security clearance.

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience with uncrewed systems, aviation, robotics, autonomy, ground control stations, mission management, command and control, defence systems, or other mission-critical technology.
• Experience with geospatial or map-based applications, telemetry visualisation, sensor or payload control, live video, or mission replay/debrief tools.
• Familiarity with any of MAVLink, ROS/ROS 2, DDS, REST, WebSockets, STANAG 4586, or related mission-system technologies.
• Experience with real-time, edge, bandwidth-constrained, disconnected, or degraded-network environments.
• Familiarity with RTSP, WebRTC, GStreamer, H.264/H.265, GPU-accelerated visualisation, or multimedia pipelines.
• Experience with human factors, operator workflows, autonomy supervision, alerting, mode awareness, usability testing, or human-autonomy teaming.
• Experience supporting field integration, flight test, range activity, customer demonstrations, or operational troubleshooting.
• Defence industry experience and/or an existing Australian Government security clearance.

Eligibility

Our mission is to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems, and this role supports that mission directly by working with Australian Government classified material. It requires an Australian Government security clearance at Baseline / NV1 / NV2 level.

You don't need to hold a clearance already, we will sponsor your clearance and support you, because mission first, people always. Australian citizenship is a mandatory requirement for this role. It is a condition of clearance eligibility set by the Australian Government, eligibility details are here:

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.

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, colour, 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.