{"id":1321387,"url":"https://alion.io/job/shield-ai-staff-deep-learning-engineer-state-estimation-r5785","title":"Staff Deep Learning Engineer, State Estimation (R5785)","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":75,"open_postings":61,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.82,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":76,"computed_at":"2026-10-14T06:34:16Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"staff","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":["US"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":{"min":200000,"max":300000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":300000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":4,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Computer Vision","optional":false},{"name":"Localization","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"SLAM","optional":false},{"name":"Visual-Inertial Odometry","optional":false},{"name":"Diffusion Models","optional":true},{"name":"ONNX","optional":true},{"name":"Quantization","optional":true},{"name":"TensorRT","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-26T19:35:10Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-26","last_verified_at":"2026-10-14T19:49:13Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":18,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":18},"description":"Job Description:\nJoin Shield AI’s Hivemind SDK State Estimation & Vision team to build deep learning capabilities that help autonomous systems understand their motion and localize in the world when GPS is unavailable or unreliable.\nYou will work at the intersection of deep learning, 3D computer vision, and geometric estimation, developing learned components for vision-based navigation. You will own the model development pipeline-from selecting tools, defining annotation needs, and cleaning data through training, evaluation, integration support, and deployment recommendations.\nHands-on experience with Deep Learning and 3D computer vision and geometry is required; prior experience specifically in vision-based navigation is optional.\nWhat you'll do:\nDevelop and evaluate models for tasks such as feature detection and matching, visual correspondence, depth estimation, relative pose estimation, and image-to-map localization.\nCombine learned visual representations with geometric methods to improve localization accuracy, robustness, and recovery under challenging conditions.\nOwn data preparation and supervision strategies, including dataset curation, annotation requirements, labeling tools, automated quality checks, and coverage analysis.\nSelect and integrate deep learning tools and build reproducible training workflows, including experiment tracking, configuration management, and dataset and model versioning.\nDesign evaluations that measure both model performance and downstream localization outcomes across changes in lighting, viewpoint, altitude, terrain, weather, and sensor characteristics.\nAnalyze failures and use controlled experiments to prioritize improvements to data, supervision, models, and integration.\nPartner with state estimation engineers to integrate learned measurements and confidence estimates into VIO and terrain-relative navigation systems.\nProfile models against onboard compute, memory, and latency constraints, and work with deployment engineers on optimization and runtime validation.\nDeliver tested, documented components and interfaces for Hivemind SDK, collaborating with software, systems, and flight test teams.\nRequired qualifications:\nM.S. in Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Computer Science, or a related field; minimum 4+ years of related professional work experience with an M.S. degree, or 2+ years with a Ph.D.\nHands-on experience designing, training, debugging, and evaluating models using PyTorch or an equivalent framework, including architecture selection, loss design, optimization, and augmentation that preserves geometric consistency.\nStrong foundations in camera models, coordinate transformations, projective geometry, and multi-view geometry, with practical experience in one or more fields: vision-based navigation, visual geolocation, Structure from Motion (SfM), SLAM, 3D reconstruction, depth estimation or similar fields. Expertise in every area is not required.\nStrong Python skills and experience writing maintainable, reusable software. Demonstrated ability to take a computer vision capability from problem definition and raw data through training, evaluation, and integration readiness.\nExperience building pipelines for sensor data ingestion, cleaning, filtering, deduplication, and dataset versioning.\nAbility to select and integrate development tools and build reproducible training workflows, including configuration management, experiment tracking, checkpointing, and GPU performance troubleshooting.\nExperience designing benchmarks, preventing data leakage across related sequences or locations, analyzing performance across operating conditions, and connecting model metrics to downstream geometric or localization accuracy.\nAbility to profile inference latency and memory use, document model interfaces and preprocessing, assess accuracy-compute tradeoffs, and advise deployment engineers on export, precision, and runtime optimization.\nAbility to communicate assumptions, experimental findings, and design tradeoffs clearly and translate research into working software.\nPreferred qualifications:\nExperience with aerial imagery, geospatial data, elevation maps, or matching observations across viewpoint, lighting, season, or sensor modality\nExperience with model export, quantization, TensorRT, ONNX, or deployment on embedded compute platforms.\nExperience validating perception or robotics systems on physical platforms.\nRelevant publications, open-source contributions, or demonstrated delivery of production computer vision systems, familiar with methods including:\nfeature correlation, correlation or cost volumes, and matching methods for correspondence, stereo, optical flow, or localization.\nlearning priors over scene geometry, depth, motion, or appearance to improve estimation under sparse, ambiguous, or degraded observations.\napplying diffusion models or flow matching to computer vision, geometric inference, or conditional generation.\nExperience in aerospace and / or defense industry.\nYou do not need every nice-to-have to succeed in this role. We welcome engineers with strong Deep Learning and 3D vision foundations who are excited to develop expertise in state estimation and navigation to apply.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5228,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":4,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"master","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Military Drones","Defense Manufacturing","Defense AI","Drone AI"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-26T21:41:58Z"}],"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":"2026-10-03T21:08:04+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":62,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.62,"p_room":1,"age_days":17,"expected_fill_days":76,"reasons":["conf:4","stale_co","velocity","win:early","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-14T06:34:16Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":300000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/shield-ai-staff-deep-learning-engineer-state-estimation-r5785","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/shield-ai-staff-deep-learning-engineer-state-estimation-r5785.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-14T20:45:29Z","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":27695,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-15T00:00:00Z"}},"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-staff-deep-learning-engineer-state-estimation-r5785"},{"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-staff-deep-learning-engineer-state-estimation-r5785"},{"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-staff-deep-learning-engineer-state-estimation-r5785"},{"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-staff-deep-learning-engineer-state-estimation-r5785\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fshield-ai-staff-deep-learning-engineer-state-estimation-r5785"}]}