Behavior and Motion Planning Software Engineer at Shield AI

Department: Hivemind Enterprise Division

Compensation

$135,000 – $300,000/yr

Setup: On-site
Location: San Diego, California
Type: Full-time
Level: not_specified
Posted: Sep 16, 2026

Description

Shield AI is hiring software engineers for its Behavior and Motion Planning team to develop, deploy, and optimize path-planning and trajectory-planning algorithms for autonomous single- and multi-agent systems. The role involves C++ and Python software development, testing, simulation and hardware validation, algorithm debugging, architecture contributions, and mentoring. Candidates need a bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience, professional experience with nontrivial C++ software in robotics or autonomous systems, modern C++ and Python skills, Linux experience, and strong software engineering fundamentals; senior-level candidates also need a master's degree or PhD and the specified years of relevant experience. The posting lists Engineer II, Senior Engineer, and Staff Engineer salary ranges.

Required Skills

C++
Python
Motion planning
Trajectory planning
Concurrency
Linux
CI/CD
Gurobi

Additional Information

Minimum Education: Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, applied mathematics, operations research, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Required Previous Experiences: Professional work, internships, research, or substantial projects building, testing, and debugging nontrivial C++ software for optimization, motion planning, robotics, autonomous systems, or a closely related algorithmic domain.
Experience writing and debugging modern C++ and diagnosing concurrency, data-race, deadlock, and lifetime issues.
Working experience with Python for prototyping, analysis, automation, or testing.
Practical experience developing and debugging software on Linux.
For senior-level candidates, a master's degree in computer science, robotics, or a related field.
For senior-level candidates, 5+ years of relevant professional experience.
For senior-level candidates, a PhD with 4+ years of relevant experience.
Preferred Qualifications: Experience with behavior or motion planning across aerial, maritime, space, or ground platforms.
Experience with multi-objective optimization problems.
Experience with Gurobi, OR-Tools, or CPLEX solvers.
Experience applying vision-language models or vision-language-action models to motion planning or autonomous decision-making.
Experience delivering software for fielded, real-time, safety-critical, or resource-constrained autonomous systems.
Experience with software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop simulation, performance profiling, or distributed systems.
Evidence of relevant technical depth through fielded systems, applied research, publications, open-source contributions, or robotics and autonomy competitions.