Staff Deep Learning Engineer, State Estimation (R5785)
Posted 13
views
Summary
Staff deep learning engineer on Shield AI's Hivemind SDK State Estimation & Vision team, building learned components for GPS-denied vision-based navigation of autonomous aircraft. Day to day: develop and evaluate PyTorch models (feature matching, depth, pose, image-to-map localization), own data and training pipelines, and integrate with geometric state estimation.
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 . Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube.
Job Description:
Join 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.
You 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.
Hands-on experience with Deep Learning and 3D computer vision and geometry is required; prior experience specifically in vision-based navigation is optional.
What you'll do:
- Develop and evaluate models for tasks such as feature detection and matching, visual correspondence, depth estimation, relative pose estimation, and image-to-map localization.
- Combine learned visual representations with geometric methods to improve localization accuracy, robustness, and recovery under challenging conditions.
- Own data preparation and supervision strategies, including dataset curation, annotation requirements, labeling tools, automated quality checks, and coverage analysis.
- Select and integrate deep learning tools and build reproducible training workflows, including experiment tracking, configuration management, and dataset and model versioning.
- Design evaluations that measure both model performance and downstream localization outcomes across changes in lighting, viewpoint, altitude, terrain, weather, and sensor characteristics.
- Analyze failures and use controlled experiments to prioritize improvements to data, supervision, models, and integration.
- Partner with state estimation engineers to integrate learned measurements and confidence estimates into VIO and terrain-relative navigation systems.
- Profile models against onboard compute, memory, and latency constraints, and work with deployment engineers on optimization and runtime validation.
- Deliver tested, documented components and interfaces for Hivemind SDK, collaborating with software, systems, and flight test teams.
Required qualifications:
- M.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.
- Hands-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.
- Strong 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.
- Strong 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.
- Experience building pipelines for sensor data ingestion, cleaning, filtering, deduplication, and dataset versioning.
- Ability to select and integrate development tools and build reproducible training workflows, including configuration management, experiment tracking, checkpointing, and GPU performance troubleshooting.
- Experience 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.
- Ability 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.
- Ability to communicate assumptions, experimental findings, and design tradeoffs clearly and translate research into working software.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience with aerial imagery, geospatial data, elevation maps, or matching observations across viewpoint, lighting, season, or sensor modality
- Experience with model export, quantization, TensorRT, ONNX, or deployment on embedded compute platforms.
- Experience validating perception or robotics systems on physical platforms.
- Relevant publications, open-source contributions, or demonstrated delivery of production computer vision systems, familiar with methods including:
- feature correlation, correlation or cost volumes, and matching methods for correspondence, stereo, optical flow, or localization.
- learning priors over scene geometry, depth, motion, or appearance to improve estimation under sparse, ambiguous, or degraded observations.
- applying diffusion models or flow matching to computer vision, geometric inference, or conditional generation.
- Experience in aerospace and / or defense industry.
You 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.
#LI-KC3
#LD
Full-time regular employee offer package:
Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity
Temporary employee offer package:
Pay within range listed above + temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)
Salary 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 and possible reference check. Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits. Please speak to your talent acquisition representative for more information.
###
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.
Skills
As published by lever · 19 questions · 9 written answers
Basics
Resume/CV, Full name, Email, Phone, Current location, Current company, LinkedIn URL, Twitter URL, GitHub URL, Portfolio URL, Other website
Short answers (1)
- Please state your full legal name:
Pick from a list (9)
- Are you authorized to work in the United States?
- Will you require sponsorship for employment now or in the future?
- This position may require access to information and technology that is subject to export controls, such as EAR. Are you any of the following?
- Shield AI provides technology, services, and support to the United States military and allied forces with their various missions. If selected for employment with Shield AI, your contributions will directly relate to and/or support these missions. Are there any reasons why you would not be able to fully contribute in support of the U.S. military and allied forces?
- How did you hear about us?
- Are you a transitioning service member?
- If yes, what partnership program are you working with? optional
- Are you local to or willing to relocate? optional
- What office(s) would you be willing to relocate to? (Select all that apply) optional
Written answers (9)
- If yes, what type of sponsorship? optional
- If you selected "A protected Individual" OR "Other" to the above question, please explain further. optional
- (Optional) If you selected other or would like to expand on the above, feel free to do so below: optional
- If "Industry Conference" or "Other," please provide more details: optional
- If other, please provide further details optional
- When are you available to start your fellowship? optional
- When are you available for full time work? optional
- What full time job(s) are you applying for?
- If you selected international, what location(s)? optional
