Staff Engineer, Full-Stack – Forge (R6232)

Shield AI is hiring a Staff Engineer, Full-Stack – Forge (R6232) in San Diego, United States. It pays $160k-$240k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply 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.

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.

The Role

We are looking for a full-stack engineer to help shape the future of physical AI by building tools to develop, train, and validate autonomous systems. You will work across TypeScript and React applications, backend services, APIs, and Python data workflows, with an emphasis on extensibility and reuse. Your work will bring together internal platforms and open-source software across local and Kubernetes environments.

You will build Forge capabilities for simulation, synthetic data generation, training, and test and evaluation, helping engineers turn ideas into proven autonomy capabilities. Working directly with Hivemind Pilot developers, Hivemind Solutions teams, and domain experts, you will translate complex workflows into reliable applications and reusable services. You will own features from user needs and design through implementation, deployment, and support.

This role suits a generalist who wants meaningful ownership, enjoys moving between frontend and backend work, and is curious about the systems that connect them. You will help shape technical decisions and deploy and troubleshoot containerized services alongside platform engineers. Practical Kubernetes experience is a plus, particularly supporting applications in cloud or on-premises environments.

How we rate this

Staff Engineer, Full-Stack – Forge (R6232) at Shield AI rates 62 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.

●●●● 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. Open the description and count.

Key facts

Staff Engineer, Full-Stack – Forge (R6232) is an open job at Shield AI.
Level rates this role AI Level 3 of 4: Works on AI.
The listed salary is $160k-$240k a year.
The role is based in San Diego, California.
The job was posted on October 9, 2026.
Seniority: lead.
Applications are handled by Shield AI. Apply on Shield AI

Get new software engineering jobs (Works on AI ●●●○ or higher) by email

One email a week with the new software engineering jobs (Works on AI ●●●○ or higher), each rated for how much AI is in the work. No recruiter spam, unsubscribe in one click.

Free. One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click.