Principal Engineer, Frontend (R4281)
Shield AI
Software Engineering
San Diego, CA, USA
USD 220k-330k / year + Equity
Posted on Jan 7, 2026
Founded in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed deep-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include the V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, Hivemind Enterprise, and the Hivemind Vision product lines. With nine offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and the 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:
As a Frontend Engineer on the Forge Platform Applications team, you will build the core web experiences that autonomy developers use every day to design, test, evaluate, and ship mission level autonomy. You will create fast, reliable interfaces that visualize simulation data, observability streams, learning workflows, and analysis outputs. You will define frontend architecture, raise engineering standards, and contribute directly to backend and data layers when needed. The work is hands on: daily commits, complex feature delivery, and tight iteration with users. You will collaborate with product, design, autonomy, and backend teams to turn platform primitives into intuitive tools that accelerate autonomy development.
What you'll do:
- Build high performance interfaces for simulation visualization, analysis tooling, observability, and workflow configuration.
- Lead frontend architecture, component systems, and UI patterns across Forge applications.
- Work with backend engineers to shape APIs and extend services in Go or Python to support new capabilities.
- Deliver user facing workflows that increase autonomy development velocity and reduce friction for expert and novice users.
- Improve reliability through testing, CI enhancements, documentation, and strong code review practices.
Required qualifications:
- Typically requires a minimum of 15 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 14 years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 12 years experience; or equivalent experience.
- Strong expertise in React, Typescript, and modern state management for large scale applications.
- Experience building data intensive, real time, or visualization heavy UIs.
- Experience profiling and optimizing frontend performance in data heavy or real time applications.
- Ability to translate Figma designs or loose product guidance into production quality interfaces.
- Working proficiency with Go or Python in support of frontend features.
Preferred qualifications:
- Exposure to autonomy, robotics, reinforcement learning, MLops, or large scale data analysis workflows.
- Familiarity with real time pipelines such as WebSockets, WebRTC, or streaming backends.
- Experience with WebGL, Three.js, geospatial rendering, or simulation oriented UIs.
- Background building SDKs, shared component libraries, or core application tooling that supports multiple teams.
- Experience with Docker, CI pipelines, Linux development, and cloud environments.
- Experience delivering software in constrained or secure environments, including air gapped systems.
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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.
220000 - 330000 USD a year