Senior Engineer, Software (R6010)

Shield AI is hiring a Senior Engineer, Software (R6010) in San Diego, United States. It pays $130k-$230k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Shield AI.

Level's read on this job

Level rates this role Little AI ●○○○: aI is not part of the work.
Level classes it as a senior role.
Shield AI has 659 other open roles on Level.

AI in this role

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:

Hivemind is looking for an experienced Senior or Staff Software Engineer to join our Developer Experience Engineering team.

The Developer Experience team owns the tools, platforms, and practices that shape how engineers build software for Hivemind. This includes local development environments, devcontainers, our internal developer platform, project templates, and approaches that enable co-development and inner-source collaboration across engineering teams.

You will build tools and paved paths that make development faster, more consistent, and more reliable. A near-term focus for this role will be bringing agentic AI capabilities into our developer tools and workflows in ways that deliver meaningful, measurable value to engineers.

This is a hands-on engineering role with broad organizational impact. You will partner directly with developers, identify recurring sources of friction, turn ambiguous needs into durable solutions, and drive adoption through documentation, advocacy, and close collaboration. You will care about engineering productivity and use signals such as DORA metrics and developer feedback to guide priorities and measure outcomes.

This position may be filled at the Senior or Staff level based on the candidate’s experience, demonstrated technical leadership, and scope of impact.

What you'll do:

Design, build, and operate tools and platforms that improve the end-to-end Hivemind developer experience
Advance local development workflows, devcontainers, internal developer platforms, project templates, and other reusable engineering capabilities
Bring agentic AI capabilities into developer tools and workflows, evaluating opportunities and turning promising ideas into reliable, practical solutions
Partner with engineering teams to understand developer needs, identify recurring friction, and create paved paths that improve productivity without limiting appropriate flexibility
Enable co-development and inner-source collaboration through accessible tooling, documentation, standards, and contribution practices
Drive adoption of developer tools by working closely with engineers, gathering feedback, providing guidance, and clearly communicating their value
Own solutions through discovery, design, implementation, testing, deployment, operation, and continuous improvement
Use DORA metrics, developer feedback, adoption data, and other signals to understand outcomes and guide investment
Contribute to technical direction through design reviews, architectural decisions, thoughtful tradeoffs, and collaboration across engineering teams
At the Staff level, lead cross-team initiatives, establish longer-term technical direction, and influence how Hivemind approaches developer productivity at organizational scale

Required qualifications:

4+ years of software engineering experience or equivalent practical experience
Demonstrated technical judgment in the design and operation of developer tools, platforms, backend services, APIs, distributed systems, or related production software
Experience owning software from initial design through deployment, operation, adoption, and continuous improvement
Systems thinking and the ability to turn recurring or ambiguous developer needs into coherent, reusable solutions
Strong customer orientation toward internal developers and an interest in understanding and improving how engineering work gets done
Effective collaboration and communication across engineering teams and organizational stakeholders
Ability to advocate for new tools and practices, incorporate feedback, and build adoption through influence
Experience with AWS and cloud-native development practices
Experience with Git, GitLab, Backstage, or similar developer-platform technologies

Preferred qualifications:

For Staff-level consideration, a demonstrated record of leading technically complex, cross-team initiatives and shaping technical direction beyond an immediate team
Experience building or operating internal developer platforms, developer portals, development environments, or reusable engineering frameworks
Experience applying AI or agentic systems to software development tools and workflows
Proficiency in one or more relevant languages, such as Python, Go, JavaScript, or TypeScript/Node.js
Experience with devcontainers, project scaffolding, service templates, or standardized local development environments
Experience enabling inner-source development or contribution across team boundaries
Familiarity with DORA metrics, developer productivity measurement, and qualitative developer-experience research

#LI-DM2 #LC
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.

How we rate this

Senior Engineer, Software (R6010) at Shield AI rates 7 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Little AI. AI is not part of the work.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.