Senior Staff Engineer, State Estimation (Sensor Fusion/Pnt) (R2443)

Founded in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed defense technology company whose mission is to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems. In pursuit of this mission, Shield AI is building the world's best AI pilot. Its AI pilot, Hivemind, has flown a fighter jet (F-16), a vertical takeoff and landing drone (V-BAT), and a quadcopter (Nova). The company has offices in San Diego, Dallas, Washington DC and abroad. Shield AI's products and people are currently in the field actively supporting operations with the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. allies. 

As a member of the State Estimation team, you will work on some of the most challenging estimation problems to bring Assured - Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (A-PNT) to the world's best AI Pilot. You will work alongside a team of experienced autonomy and software engineers that enjoy taking on challenging problems and delivering extraordinary results. Your main challenge will be to investigate, simulate, and implement sensors and sensor processing algorithms that help to observe an aircraft's state (position, velocity, orientation, etc.) in scenarios where global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) is degraded or denied. 

What you'll do:

• Architect end to end systems for GNSS-denied navigation for UAV applications.
• Research and implement alternative sensing modalities for GNSS denied environments.
• Conduct sensor down selection exercises to pick the best sensors suited to customer CONOPS. 
• Study the state-of-the-art literature and develop algorithms to extract the best navigation performance.
• Implement algorithms in MATLAB/Simulink to implement quick-turn proof of concept prototypes to quantify accuracy and observability improvements to be expected from new sensors and algorithms.
• Collaborate with software engineers to productionize code.
• Analyze simulated and flight test data to characterize algorithm performance and identify failure modes.
• Other duties as assigned.

Projects that you might work on:

• Research and implement vision processing algorithms to infer aircraft position from real-time aircraft imagery.
• Collaborate with industry partners and customers to define best practices for GNSS-denied navigation.
• Architect GNSS-denied navigation solutions under tight size, weight, and power constraints.

Required qualifications:

• M.S. in Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or another related field.
• Typically requires a minimum of 9 years and a master's degree; or 7 years with a PhD; or equivalent work experience.
• Expertise with State Estimation and sensor fusion algorithms such as Kalman Filters, Particle Filters, and other estimation methods.
• Experience in vision-based navigation, visual inertial odometry (VIO) and other related techniques.
• Experience designing and delivering GNSS-denied navigation solutions for commercial/military customers.
• Experience with alternative navigation sources such as celestial navigation, magnetic navigation, etc.
• Proficient in MATLAB/Simulink
• Experience with C++ in a Linux development environment.

Preferred qualifications:

• PhD in Aerospace Enginering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or related field.
• Image processing experience including visual odometry, visual feature detection + matching, and photometric alignment.
• Strong command of modern C++
• Experience with factor graphs and other graph-based estimation techniques.
• Proven experience with modern software engineering best practices in algorithms, data structures, and clean code methodologies
• CUDA
• CMake
• Python

$173,654 - $246,273 a year

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Total package details:

Regular employee positions: Salary within range listed above + Bonus + Benefits + Equity (if applicable)

Temporary employee positions: Hourly within range listed above + temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)

*Interns/Military Fellows/Part-time not eligible for bonus, benefits or equity

Actual 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 check.

If you're interested in being part of our team, apply now! 

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.