Staff Engineer, Software (R6331)

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and 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 Staff Software Engineer on the Enterprise Software Engineering team, you will design and build the applications, services, and integrations that keep Shield AI's business running – connecting the systems our engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, and finance teams depend on every day. You will work primarily in C#/.NET with React on the frontend, building distributed, message-driven systems in the cloud and bringing AI capabilities into the tools our people use.

This is a hands-on, senior engineering role, where you will drive solutions from requirements, system design through deployment and support – sometimes leading a project, and at other times working closely with your teammates on a shared codebase. We move fast, so we are looking for someone who learns quickly, hits the ground running, and is comfortable making sound decisions with incomplete information.

What you'll do:

• Design, build, and maintain enterprise applications, APIs, and services using C#/.NET and React, with Python where it is the right tool for the job.
• Architect and implement distributed, event-driven systems using message brokers (e.g., RabbitMQ, Kafka, Azure Service Bus, MQTT) and service frameworks such as NServiceBus or MassTransit.
• Build reliable integrations between enterprise systems (e.g., PLM, ERP, identity, and engineering platforms), handling long-running workflows, retries, and failure recovery.
• Apply proven system design patterns – such as Saga/process managers, outbox, CQRS, and idempotent consumers – to deliver scalable, resilient, maintainable solutions.
• Design and integrate AI capabilities into applications, such as LLM-powered features, agents, and intelligent automation.
• Use AI-assisted development tools to accelerate delivery while maintaining high standards for code quality, security, and review.
• Deploy and operate services in Azure and/or AWS for our team and other teams across the business, applying sound practices for security, networking, identity, reliability, and cost.
• Use existing CI/CD and developer platforms (GitLab, Azure DevOps, GitHub, Artifactory, SonarQube) to build, test, and ship software; contribute pipeline changes as your projects require.
• Instrument services for observability and troubleshoot asynchronous and distributed processes in production.
• Collaborate closely with fellow Staff engineers – contributing to design reviews, code reviews, and the team's engineering standards – and lead projects when the work calls for it.
• Partner with stakeholders across the business to understand problems, shape requirements, and deliver solutions with measurable impact.

Required qualifications:

• Typically requires a minimum of 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field; or equivalent practical experience.
• Deep expertise in C# and .NET (.NET 6+ / ASP.NET Core, an open-source web development framework | .NET Core), including building RESTful APIs, background services, and Entity Framework or similar data access.
• Professional experience building frontends with React (TypeScript preferred).
• Hands-on experience with messaging and event-driven architecture using RabbitMQ, Kafka, MQTT, Azure Service Bus, or similar technologies, including an understanding of delivery guarantees, ordering, retries, and dead-letter handling.
• Strong knowledge/experience in architecting and using Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) tools
• Strong understanding of system design and architectural patterns, including distributed systems, microservices vs. modular monoliths, eventual consistency, and resiliency patterns.
• Cloud experience is a must – preferably Azure or AWS. Solid grasp of core cloud concepts at an associate-certification level (e.g., AZ-204, AZ-104, AWS Solutions Architect – Associate, AWS Developer – Associate), including security, networking, identity and access management (IAM/RBAC), compute, storage, and managed services.
• Working knowledge of CI/CD and deployment practices – comfortable building, deploying, and troubleshooting applications through pipelines, though platform administration is not a primary responsibility.
• Experience with relational databases (e.g., SQL Server, PostgreSQL), including data modeling and query performance.
• Strong experience with AI coding tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, or similar) and practical judgment about how to use them effectively and safely.
• Strong testing discipline, including unit, integration, and end-to-end testing.
• Thrives in a fast-paced environment – learns new domains and technologies quickly and delivers value early.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to explain technical trade-offs to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
• Demonstrated commitment to ownership, continuous improvement, and being a reliable, respectful team member.

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience implementing the Saga pattern (orchestration and/or choreography) for long-running business processes.
• Experience with NServiceBus and the Particular Service Platform (ServicePulse, ServiceInsight, ServiceControl), or comparable tools for monitoring and troubleshooting asynchronous, message-based systems.
• Proficiency in Python for services, scripting, data processing, or AI/ML workloads.
• Active Azure or AWS certification (associate level or higher).
• Experience with containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes, Azure Container Apps, AKS/EKS) and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Bicep).
• Experience with observability tooling (OpenTelemetry, Application Insights, Grafana, Datadog, or similar).
• Experience integrating with enterprise identity platforms (Microsoft Entra ID, OAuth 2.0/OpenID Connect, SSO, RBAC).
• Experience integrating enterprise business systems such as PLM (e.g., Teamcenter, Arena), ERP (e.g., Costpoint), or similar.
• Experience developing software in a DoD, defense, or government contractor environment, including Azure Government or AWS GovCloud.
• Familiarity with secure software development practices and frameworks such as NIST 800-218 (SSDF).
• Experience working as a peer on a small senior team, sharing a codebase and alternating between leading and contributing to projects.