Senior Software Engineer, Frontend Platform (R5790)

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.

About Shield AI:

Shield AI is a defense technology company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. We build autonomy systems for air, maritime, space, and other platforms operating in complex and contested environments.

Forge is the engineering platform used to build, integrate, test, and operate Hivemind capabilities. It connects autonomy developers with the applications, services, compute, data, and workflows they need to move from local development to deployed systems.

Job Description:

We are looking for a full-stack engineer interested in customer-facing products, developer tools, and AI-assisted workflows. You will partner with internal subject-matter experts to build an extensible application platform and complete applications on it.

Shield AI’s Hivemind developers are the platform’s primary design partners and proving ground. Forge is also designed for external engineering teams to adopt, extend, and integrate into their own environments.

You will help evolve Forge into an integrated engineering environment with shared foundations for APIs, user interfaces, extensions, model integrations, and agent tools. Working across frontend architecture, backend services, and model integrations, you will validate the platform through real workflows. Your work will help engineers understand complex systems, develop autonomy software, investigate failures, and deliver reliable capabilities faster.

What you'll do:

• Build and operate a front-end focused development platform embedded in the workflows used to train, validate, and deploy the AI Pilot.

• Design a composable UI architecture that lets applications contribute apps, dashboards, commands, widgets, and shared resource context.

• Define typed, versioned contracts between the platform and independently developed Forge applications.

• Create workflows for teams to package, publish, configure, install, upgrade, and disable applications.

• Enable Forge’s native AI experiences and external agent harnesses to understand active context, invoke authorized tools, navigate applications, and compose dashboards.

• Deliver consistent application behavior across local-development and AI Factory environments.

• Partner with simulation, autonomy, and ML subject-matter experts to build initial applications, validate the platform against real workflows, and incorporate what you learn.

• Work across infrastructure, security, product, and design to shape the platform’s architecture and engineering practices.

Key outcomes:

A successful engineer in this role will help deliver the following outcomes:

• Build and operate a front-end focused development platform embedded in the workflows used to train, validate, and deploy the AI Pilot.

• Design a composable UI architecture that lets applications contribute apps, dashboards, commands, widgets, and shared resource context.

• Define typed, versioned contracts between the platform and independently developed Forge applications.

• Create workflows for teams to package, publish, configure, install, upgrade, and disable applications.

• Enable Forge’s native AI experiences and external agent harnesses to understand active context, invoke authorized tools, navigate applications, and compose dashboards.

• Deliver consistent application behavior across local-development and AI Factory environments.

• Partner with simulation, autonomy, and ML subject-matter experts to build initial applications, validate the platform against real workflows, and incorporate what you learn.

• Work across infrastructure, security, product, and design to shape the platform’s architecture and engineering practices.

Required qualifications:

• Experience owning production full-stack applications from design and implementation through rollout and support.

• Strong proficiency with TypeScript and React or an equivalent modern web stack.

• Experience building production backend services in Go, Python, Rust, or a comparable language.

• Experience designing typed, versioned APIs and contracts between independently deployed components.

• Strong knowledge of web and distributed-system architecture, including state management, routing, asynchronous communication, browser security, authentication, authorization, and failure handling.

• Experience building real-time and high-performance applications (WebGL, WebGPU)

• Sound judgment about when to extend an existing system, introduce an abstraction, or keep a solution intentionally small.

• Clear communication skills and the ability to work across frontend, backend, infrastructure, and product disciplines.

Preferred qualifications:

Experience in every area below is not expected. Relevant experience may include:

• Extensible application platforms, including plugin systems, micro-frontends, web sandboxing, Web Components, or VS Code extensions.

• Agent-tool integrations and protocols such as Model Context Protocol.

• API gateways, reverse proxies, service catalogs, or policy-driven routing.

• Schema-driven API development using OpenAPI, JSON Schema, Protocol Buffers, gRPC, or generated clients.

• Kubernetes and ingress/gateways

• Composable user experiences such as dashboard builders, configurable layouts, data visualization, or collaborative application state.

• Robotics, autonomy, simulation, aerospace, or other domains where software interacts with real-world systems.

• Shipping Electron Applicatitions

Why join us:

• Connect your work directly to the mission. The platform and applications you build help engineers develop, validate, and deliver the autonomy software behind Hivemind.
• Define human-and-agent workflows. Design how engineers and AI agents use the same platform tools while preserving user control, security, and accountability.
• Own complete workflows. Work across user experience, frontend architecture, backend services, APIs, deployment, and operations.
• Build alongside engaged users. Partner with engineers solving autonomy, simulation, data, and infrastructure problems, and see the direct effect of your decisions.

$130,000 - $240,000 a year

San Diego, CA pay range: $130,000 - $200,000

San Mateo, CA pay range: $150,000 - $240,000

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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.