Develop and maintain automated test frameworks, CI/CD pipelines, and validation infrastructure for distributed autonomy software and hardware systems. Build Python tooling, UI and API test automation, simulators, test harnesses, and hardware-in-the-loop solutions. Analyze failures, improve coverage and observability, and collaborate with engineering teams on verification strategies for safety-critical aerospace software. The role also evaluates AI-assisted development tools for test generation, debugging, log analysis, and workflow automation.
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.
The Hivemind Software Engineering Integration and Test team is seeking an Automated Test Engineer to design, develop, and scale advanced automated testing and CI/CD infrastructure for our next-generation autonomy platform. You will help develop test frameworks that enable this software ecosystem to create, test and deploy resilient autonomy capabilities for unmanned aircraft and robotic platforms operating in complex, contested, and GPS-denied environments. You will work with a robust suite of autonomy and mission software components, including production flight code, simulation and synthetic environment tooling, mission planning and orchestration systems, operator-facing Ground Control Station (GCS) applications, telemetry and data pipelines, and cloud-native developer infrastructure.
In this role, you will help ensure the reliability, scalability, and quality of the Hivemind ecosystem through advanced automation, validation infrastructure, and AI-assisted engineering workflows. You will develop automated test frameworks, CI/CD systems, and verification tooling that support distributed autonomy software spanning onboard edge compute, APIs, web-based operator interfaces, simulation environments, and hardware-in-the-loop systems. Working closely with software, autonomy, simulation, and systems engineering teams, you will contribute to a high-assurance development environment focused on mission-critical reliability, rapid iteration, and engineering excellence. The ideal candidate has strong experience in Python-based automation, distributed systems testing, developer tooling, and modern CI/CD practices, along with an interest in autonomy, aerospace, robotics, or safety-critical software systems. Experience leveraging AI-assisted development and intelligent automation tools to accelerate testing, debugging, analytics, and developer productivity is highly valued.
What you'll do:
- Design, develop, and maintain automated test frameworks for Autonomy and UI applications.
- Develop scalable automated test infrastructure for functional, integration, regression, system, and end-to-end testing across distributed software and hardware environments.
- Create and maintain CI/CD pipelines in GitLab using YAML configurations and shell scripting to support automated build, test, and deployment workflows.
- Build workflow automation tools and utilities in Python to improve test execution efficiency, reporting, environment setup, and developer productivity.
- Develop and maintain UI and API test automation using Go and TypeScript for modern web-based operator interfaces and mission control applications.
- Integrate automated testing into continuous integration environments to support rapid software delivery and high reliability standards.
- Collaborate closely with software, autonomy, simulation, and systems engineering teams to define verification strategies and improve software quality throughout the development lifecycle.
- Develop automated validation solutions for safety-critical and mission-critical aerospace software systems.
- Create test harnesses, simulators, stubs, and mocks to support automated verification in both simulated and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) environments.
- Analyze test results, troubleshoot failures, and work with development teams to isolate root causes and improve system reliability.
- Improve test coverage, execution speed, maintainability, and observability of automated test systems.
- Contribute to software quality standards, coding best practices, and automation architecture decisions.
- Maintain clear technical documentation for test frameworks, automation workflows, CI/CD infrastructure, and validation procedures.
- Support release qualification activities and ensure traceability between requirements, tests, and verification results where applicable.
- Represent the Integration and Test Role in design reviews and advocate for a culture of engineering excellence and continuous improvement.
- Develop AI-assisted engineering workflows and analytics tools using modern coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex, and related LLM-based development platforms to improve test generation, failure triage, debugging, and developer productivity.
- Design intelligent automation pipelines that leverage AI-assisted code generation, log analysis, test analysis, and workflow orchestration to accelerate software verification and validation processes.
- Evaluate and integrate emerging AI-driven software engineering tools into automated test and CI/CD ecosystems while maintaining reliability, traceability, and engineering quality standards.
Required qualificatons:
- 2+ years of experience building scalable, maintainable automation frameworks and/or developer tooling in Python.
- 2+ years of experience working with package management, dependency management, and build systems using tools such as conan, pip, setuptools, poetry, and nix or similar.
- 2+ years of experience building tooling for automated log collection, analytics, reporting, and failure triage.
- Strong understanding of asynchronous and concurrent programming in Python for scalable automation and parallel test execution.
- Experience developing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines using GitLab CI, YAML, and shell scripting.
- Experience with automated testing of distributed systems, backend services, APIs, and web-based UIs.
- Familiarity with modern test frameworks, automated validation strategies, and software quality methodologies.
- Experience working in Linux-based development environments.
- Strong debugging and problem-solving skills in complex software systems.
- Excellent collaboration and communication skills in cross-functional engineering environments.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience integrating Python with native C/C++ libraries and applications using bindings, wrappers, subprocess interfaces, or interoperability tooling.
- Proficiency with Go and/or TypeScript for automation tooling or UI test development.
- Experience with C++ development or testing.
- Aerospace, robotics, autonomy, or safety-critical software experience.
- Familiarity with simulation, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL), or embedded system testing.
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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.
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