{"id":118843,"url":"https://alion.io/job/shield-ai-senior-staff-software-engineer-perception-r4985-2","title":"Senior Staff Software Engineer, Perception (R4985)","company":{"id":50,"name":"Shield AI","domain":"shield.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/shield-ai","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Lever","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":73,"open_postings":83,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.867,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":65,"computed_at":"2026-10-28T05:59:10Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"staff","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Washington, United States","San Diego, United States","Dallas, United States","Boston, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":233760,"max":350640,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":350640},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":10,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Computer Vision","optional":false},{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"ONNX","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"SFT","optional":false},{"name":"TensorFlow","optional":false},{"name":"TensorFlow C++","optional":false},{"name":"TensorRT","optional":false},{"name":"Vision-Language-Action","optional":false},{"name":"VLM","optional":false},{"name":"World Models","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-07-28T21:18:45Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-07-28","last_verified_at":"2026-10-28T06:04:29Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":91,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":91},"description":"The Hivemind Solutions Perception team develops the next generation of perception capabilities for autonomous systems by combining state-of-the-art machine learning with the proven foundations of computer vision. The team advances how autonomous platforms understand and interpret the world by developing vision, vision-language (VLM), and vision-language-action (VLA) models that tackle core perception challenges such as object understanding, scene interpretation, and mission-relevant environmental awareness. Working at the intersection of research and production, our engineers build the data pipelines, supervised fine-tuning (SFT) workflows, evaluation frameworks, and deployment infrastructure needed to transform cutting-edge AI research into reliable, mission-ready perception capabilities.\nIn this role, you'll develop and deploy advanced machine learning models that enable autonomous systems to better understand, reason about, and interact with their environment. You'll partner closely with machine learning researchers, autonomy engineers, perception engineers, and platform teams to translate emerging AI capabilities into reliable, production-ready systems for U.S. and international defense customers. This is an ideal opportunity for engineers who enjoy building state-of-the-art AI systems while solving the practical challenges of deploying them on operational autonomous platforms.\nWhat You'll Do:\nModel Development- Design, train, fine-tune, and maintain state-of-the-art vision, vision-language, and vision-language-action models that improve perception and decision-making for autonomous systems.\nData Pipelines & Model Training- Build scalable data pipelines, supervised fine-tuning (SFT) workflows, and evaluation loops that continuously improve model performance on mission-relevant tasks.\nModel Deployment & Optimization- Deploy and optimize machine learning models for embedded hardware using technologies such as ONNX, TensorRT, and hardware-accelerated inference frameworks.\nPerception & Autonomy Applications- Apply modern machine learning techniques to solve challenging perception and autonomy problems across aerial and other autonomous systems operating in complex, real-world environments.\nResearch-to-Production- Translate cutting-edge machine learning research into production-ready capabilities by balancing model performance, robustness, computational efficiency, and operational reliability.\nCross-functional Collaboration- Partner closely with perception, autonomy, platform, and software engineering teams to integrate machine learning capabilities into mission-ready autonomous systems.\nModel Evaluation & Validation- Develop benchmarks, testing methodologies, and evaluation frameworks to measure model performance, identify failure modes, and guide future improvements.\nContinuous Improvement- Improve training infrastructure, developer tooling, deployment workflows, and model lifecycle management to accelerate experimentation and production delivery.\nRequired Qualifications:\nTypically requires a minimum of 10 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 9 years and a Master’s degree; or 7 years with a PhD; or equivalent work experience.\n\nMastery of machine learning fundamentals.\n\nExperience training an deploying ML models for computer vision in a production setting.\n\nStrong understanding of 3D vision problems/algorithms.\n\nExperience with machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch and TensorFlow.\n\nDemonstrated expertise in deploying models using TensorRT and ONNX.\n\nProficiency in C++ and Python.\n\nStrong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to translate research into practical applications.\n\nAbility to obtain a SECRET clearance\nPreferred Qualifications:\nExperience with developing autonomous systems for defense customers.\n\nExperience with training/finetuning vision-language models, vision-language-action models, and/or world models.\n\nContributions to open-source projects in machine learning or computer vision.\n\nTrack record of publications in leading computer vision and robotics conferences and journals (e.g., CVPR, ICCV/ECCV, RAL, ICRA).","description_format":"text","description_chars":4141,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":10,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":true,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Military Drones","Defense Manufacturing","Defense AI","Drone AI"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-07-28T21:18:45Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 2","filings_12m":2,"filings_prev_12m":2,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":132500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":1}],"liveness":{"score":24,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.542,"p_room":0.44,"age_days":91,"expected_fill_days":65,"reasons":["conf:4","stale_co","velocity","win:tail","crowd:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-28T05:59:10Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":350640,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/shield-ai-senior-staff-software-engineer-perception-r4985-2","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/shield-ai-senior-staff-software-engineer-perception-r4985-2.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-28T06:11:04Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":8054,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-29T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":50},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=50"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fshield-ai-senior-staff-software-engineer-perception-r4985-2"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fshield-ai-senior-staff-software-engineer-perception-r4985-2"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fshield-ai-senior-staff-software-engineer-perception-r4985-2"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/shield-ai-senior-staff-software-engineer-perception-r4985-2\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fshield-ai-senior-staff-software-engineer-perception-r4985-2"}]}