Senior Principal Engineer, GNC & State Estimation (R6233)

Shield AI · San Diego, California · Posted 2026-10-09

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 Senior Principal Engineer, you will establish and lead the technical direction of Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) and State Estimation within Hivemind Enterprise (HME). You will build the team and capabilities that enable customers to develop, integrate, validate, and deploy reliable autonomy across aircraft platforms.

You will bring at least 15 years of GNC domain experience, deep expertise in aircraft dynamics, flight controls, navigation, and state estimation, and a demonstrated record of delivering production autopilot or flight-control software. As a hands-on technical leader, you will develop algorithms, contribute production software, guide critical engineering decisions, and establish a fast, rigorous development cycle spanning simulation, hardware-in-the-loop testing, and flight testing.

Working with stakeholders across Hivemind Enterprise, Hivemind Solutions, and Shield AI’s aircraft organizations, you will define HME’s GNC and State Estimation technical roadmap and translate it into reusable platform capabilities and customer deliverables. You will help drive our Runtime Assurance (RTA) solution and deliver the required capabilities that will help our customers develop the technical evidence needed to support airworthiness of their platforms.

This role combines senior individual-contributor leadership with the opportunity to establish a new engineering team. You will attract and mentor exceptional engineers and build trusted relationships with GNC and State Estimation leaders throughout Shield AI.

What you'll do:

Establish the technical vision and roadmap. Own HME’s GNC and State Estimation technical strategy, architecture, and development priorities. Align investments with product management, customer requirements, aircraft needs, and the roadmaps of partner organizations.
Build the team from the ground up. Define the capabilities and technical roles the team needs, help recruit and assess outstanding engineers, and establish effective onboarding, mentorship, and engineering standards. Partner with engineering leadership to grow a strong, collaborative technical organization.
Lead hands-on algorithm development. Design, implement, tune, and validate guidance, navigation, flight-control, and state-estimation capabilities. Take direct ownership of difficult technical problems and contribute to critical algorithms, production code, and engineering tools.
Deliver production autopilot and flight-control software. Guide capabilities from requirements and initial models through embedded implementation, integration, verification, customer deployment, and sustainment. Address real-time behavior, numerical robustness, hardware constraints, and fault handling.
Build a reusable GNC platform. Establish modular algorithms, interfaces, vehicle and sensor abstractions, configuration mechanisms, and validation tools that support multiple aircraft and customer integrations. Enable portability between simulation and deployed environments while preserving platform-specific performance and assurance requirements.
Accelerate the simulation-to-flight development cycle. Work with simulation and test teams to establish high-fidelity vehicle and sensor models, automated software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop testing, Monte Carlo analysis, and regression coverage. Use flight data to improve models, tune algorithms, investigate anomalies, and validate subsequent releases.
Drive GNC and estimation contributions to RTA. Partner with the RTA, safety, and HME pilot teams on monitoring, protection, and recovery capabilities. Lead relevant algorithm development, tuning, integration, and validation.
Guide customers through technical airworthiness work. Help customers establish platform-specific assumptions, requirements, operating limits, verification plans, and supporting evidence. Work with systems safety and airworthiness specialists to address findings and support technical reviews throughout integration and qualification.
Build trusted technical partnerships across Shield AI. Develop strong working relationships with peer GNC and State Estimation leaders. Establish shared reviews, exchange lessons from simulation and flight testing, identify opportunities for reuse, and resolve technical differences through clear analysis and collaborative decisions.

Required qualifications:

At least 15 years of professional experience in GNC, including substantial hands-on development of aircraft flight controls, autopilot capabilities, navigation, and state estimation.
Expert knowledge of aircraft dynamics, stability and control, guidance, and estimation, with demonstrated ability to apply that knowledge to practical flight systems.
Deep experience with state estimation and sensor fusion, including inertial navigation, Kalman or nonlinear filtering, sensor characterization, and evaluation of estimation accuracy, consistency, and robustness.
A demonstrated record of shipping and supporting production autopilot, flight-control, or integrated GNC software, including direct involvement in flight testing and deployment to operational aircraft or customer platforms.
Significant experience as a technical lead, Principal Engineer, chief engineer, or equivalent, with ownership of complex technical decisions and influence across multiple engineering teams.
Demonstrated ability to recruit, mentor, and develop strong technical talent, including experience establishing a new engineering capability or building and growing a specialist team.
Strong current proficiency in C++ for production, real-time software, together with MATLAB/Simulink or equivalent modeling tools and Python or comparable analysis and automation tools.
Extensive experience designing, tuning, and validating GNC systems through high-fidelity simulation, software-in-the-loop testing, hardware-in-the-loop testing, and flight-test analysis.
Experience with safety-critical development and verification, including requirements traceability, technical reviews, configuration management, and generation of evidence supporting qualification or airworthiness.
Experience designing reusable algorithms, libraries, interfaces, or development tools that serve multiple platforms, programs, or engineering teams.
Ability to work effectively in a modern development environment using version control, code review, continuous integration, automated testing, and reproducible simulation and analysis workflows.
Strong communication and collaboration skills, with a record of establishing technical roadmaps, delivering against commitments, incorporating customer feedback, and earning the trust of senior technical peers.
Master's degree in aerospace engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, Applied Mathematics or Computer Science

Preferred qualifications:

Experience with GCAS / ACAS, detect-and-avoid, flight-envelope protection, or related flight-safety capabilities.
Direct experience developing or validating Runtime Assurance architectures, safety monitors, recovery controllers, or assured-autonomy capabilities.
Experience guiding customers or aircraft programs through military or civil airworthiness processes, including engagement with relevant technical authorities.
Familiarity with DO-178C or comparable development-assurance processes and RTA guidance.
Experience deploying navigation and estimation capabilities in GNSS-degraded or denied environments, including integration of APNT sources.
Experience across multiple aircraft configurations, such as fixed-wing, VTOL, or rotorcraft, and adapting shared GNC capabilities to different flight envelopes.
Advanced expertise in areas such as robust or nonlinear control, model predictive control, trajectory optimization, system identification, or advanced estimation.
Master’s degree or PhD with an emphasis on controls, navigation, estimation, robotics, or autonomous systems.

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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.

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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.

About Shield AI

Shield AI is an artificial intelligence company that aims to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems.