Staff Software Engineer ML Platform (6244)
- Salary
- USD 200,000 - 300,000 / per-year-salary
- Level
- Staff
- Work type
- On-site · San Diego
Not stated in the posting: visa.
Open. First seen 2 November 2026.
About the role
Shield AI's standard text
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:
Model development produces experiments, checkpoints, evaluation results and many versions of the same model. Keeping those records connected lets engineers reproduce results, compare approaches and move a trained model into use.
We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to build the backend services that make those workflows reliable. You will connect training runs to their data, code and configuration, manage model artifacts and help machine-learning engineers spend less time reconstructing what happened in an experiment.
What you'll do:
Build experiment-tracking and model-registry services, integrating tools such as MLflow where appropriate.
Connect exact dataset, code and configuration versions to training runs, checkpoints and model versions.
Develop APIs and adapters that connect training jobs, data services and artifact storage.
Make interrupted or failed workflows recoverable through reliable state handling, retries and useful diagnostics.
Make checkpoints, model artifacts and evaluation results easy to find and retrieve for further training, evaluation or deployment.
Work directly with machine-learning engineers to simplify their workflows and reduce manual record keeping.
Deliver tested services with observability and compatible upgrades across supported cloud and customer-managed environments.
Key Outcomes:
Engineers can trace a model version back to the data, code, configuration and run that produced it.
Checkpoints and evaluation evidence remain available when jobs fail or workflows change.
Developers can compare experiments and retrieve model artifacts through consistent APIs.
Teams can reproduce results without manually reconstructing experiment history.
Required qualifications:
Experience building production backend services for machine-learning platforms or data-intensive workflows.
Strong software engineering skills in Python or a comparable backend language.
Experience designing APIs, metadata models and persistent state for services used by other engineers.
Experience handling storage, partial failures, retries and consistency in distributed systems.
Understanding of training runs, checkpoints and model versioning.
Ability to work directly with machine-learning users and deliver maintainable software that solves their workflow problems.
Preferred qualifications:
Experience with MLflow, Weights & Biases, model registries or comparable experiment-management tools.
Experience integrating Kubernetes jobs, object storage or machine-learning workflow systems.
Experience with reproducibility, data provenance or evaluation records.
Experience supporting open-source software or on-premises and air-gapped deployments.
Why Join Us
The AI Factory is the foundation for how Shield AI develops and deploys autonomy.
As a Senior Staff Engineer, you will help build the reference architecture used internally by our engineering teams and delivered to customers building their own AI capabilities. Your work will directly impact how quickly researchers can iterate, how efficiently compute resources are utilized, and how AI systems move from experimentation to operational deployment.
This is an opportunity to work at the intersection of modern AI, distributed systems, Kubernetes, and defense, building a platform that enables the next generation of autonomy systems while leveraging the best of the open-source AI ecosystem.
#LI-DM2
#LF
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's standard text
###
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.
What this role asks for
Particular to this role
Kubernetes · MLflow
Rare in Shield AI's other 299 open postings.
Standard for data science / ML roles
Python
Common in data science / ML postings at any company.
81% of this description is written for the role. The rest is Shield AI's standard text, folded away below.
Compared with Shield AI's other open jobs.
The team: Engineering HIRES STEADILY
This role is one of 38 open in Engineering. 19 were posted in the last 30 days and the oldest in July: a team that hires all year rather than one being built.
WHAT THE TEAM WORKS WITH, ACROSS ITS POSTINGS
Python (29 of 38), C++ (22 of 38), Linux (14 of 38), Kubernetes (9 of 38), CI/CD (8 of 38), Golang (8 of 38), PyTorch (7 of 38)
OTHER ROLES ON THIS TEAM
- Staff, Platform Engineer AI Compute (6034) posted Nov 2
- Senior Software Engineer, Frontend Platform (R5790) posted Oct 28
- Staff Engineer, Modelling and Simulation (R6248) posted Oct 17
- Principal Engineer, Edge Applications & Mission Systems (R6245) posted Oct 17
- Manager, Visual Design - Synthetic Reality Development posted Oct 16
- Staff Engineer, Hivemind Reasoning (R6292) posted Oct 15
- Senior Manager, Engineering - Hivemind Reasoning (R6291) posted Oct 15
- Staff Software Engineer, Autonomy & Motion Planning posted Oct 10
- Senior Engineer, Full-Stack - Forge (R6244) posted Oct 10
- Senior Principal Engineer, GNC & State Estimation (R6233) posted Oct 9
- Staff Engineer, Full-Stack – Forge (R6232) posted Oct 9
- Senior Engineer, Full-Stack, Frontend Focus - Forge Applications (R6231) posted Oct 9
- Staff Autonomy Integration Engineer posted Oct 9
- Staff Engineer, Autonomy Behaviors posted Oct 9
- Senior Engineering Manager posted Oct 9
- Systems Test Engineer posted Oct 9
- Staff Software Engineer, Software Integration & Test posted Oct 9
- Staff Safety-Critical Software Engineer (R5788) posted Oct 8
- Senior Software Engineer, Autonomy Integration (R6035) posted Oct 3
- Perception Engineer - Multimodal & Embodied AI (R6022) posted Oct 3
- Senior C++ Engineer – Foundations (R6023) posted Oct 3
- Senior Staff Engineer, Autonomy Integration Lead (R6159) posted Oct 3
- Senior Safety-Critical Software Engineer (R5788) posted Sep 26
- Staff Engineer, Aircraft Trajectory Modeling (R5787) posted Sep 26
- Staff Deep Learning Engineer, State Estimation (R5785) posted Sep 26
- Staff Engineer, State Estimation (R5783) posted Sep 26
- Staff Engineer, Platform (R6019) posted Sep 22
- Autonomy Engineer- Behavior and Motion Planning (R6007) posted Sep 16
- Autonomy & Perception Software Engineer (R5911) posted Sep 9
- Senior Staff Engineer, ML Ops (R4941) posted Aug 31
- Staff Engineer, Data Platform (R5659) posted Aug 26
- Discrete Planning Engineer (R5440) posted Jul 24
- Staff Engineer, Core Platform Integration (R5411) posted Jul 23
- Senior Staff Engineer, Software Autonomy (R5125) posted Jun 4
- Senior Staff Engineer, ML Ops (R4941) posted May 14
- Senior Software Engineer, Autonomy Applications Engineering posted Sep 30
- Staff Software Engineer, Autonomy Applications Engineering posted Jul 8
From the team and dates on Shield AI's own job board.
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