Principal Systems Engineer, Cloud Architecture (R3366)
Shield AI
Software Engineering, IT
San Diego, CA, USA · San Diego, CA, USA · New York, USA
Posted on Apr 16, 2025
Founded in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed defense technology company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent, autonomous systems. Its products include Hivemind Enterprise—EdgeOS, Pilot, Commander, and Forge—as well as V-BAT and Sentient Vision Systems (wide-area motion imaging software). With offices in San Diego, Dallas, Washington, D.C., Abu Dhabi (UAE), Kyiv (Ukraine), and Melbourne (Australia), Shield AI’s technology actively supports U.S. and allied operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X and Instagram.
As a Principal Systems Engineer of Cloud Architecture for the Hivemind Enterprise team, you will work closely with our other architects to drive quality system and feature designs and guide product component teams through design iterations. You will be a subject matter expert on software as a service deployments and technical architectures, working close with Hivemind Forge and Commander product components that provide the framework for developing autonomy. The right person for this role has many years and product cycles of experience for cloud software product launches, including design, development, test, analysis, software maintenance/sustainment, and continuous improvement. If you are someone who has hands-on experience cloud/SaaS products and wants to create the ecosystem for how the community develops and certifies autonomy, then come join the team!
What You'll Do:
- Support the design and implementation of platform back-end, including robust data models and database architectures to support distributed systems, scalable APIs and resilient infrastructure for managing high-throughput data pipelines and complex simulation workloads, and networked systems.
- Support the design and optimize cloud deployments of Forge to ensure scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency.
- Engage in technical strategy and roadmap capture for upcoming releases and 18-month lookahead.
- Mentor and guide component engineering teams on best practices.
- Conduct technical design reviews and audits of code and implementations.
- Serve as the primary technical consultant to Product for architecture and future customer/partner engagements.
Required Qualifications:
- 12+ years of industry experience as a Software Engineer, Systems Engineer, or System Safety Engineer focused on cloud product architectures and production software deployments.
- 5+ years of technical leadership experience.
- 5+ experience with cloud computing platforms, container orchestration, and virtualization technologies (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker, VMware).
- Experience deploying secure, reliable infrastructure in hybrid cloud and on-premises environments.
- Advanced proficiency with Golang and Python for systems programming and backend development.
- Advanced proficiency with Typescript, React, or Angular.
- Advanced proficiency in cloud infrastructure (AWS and Azure preferred).
- B.S. Degree in Engineering or more advanced degree.
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.
###
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.