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Shield AI

Staff Software Engineer ML Platform (6244)

Shield AI is hiring a Staff Software Engineer ML Platform (6244) in San Diego, United States. It pays $200k-$300k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Shield AI.

Level's read on this job

  • On Level's scale, this software engineer role is Little AI ●○○○: aI is not part of the work.
  • Pay on this posting starts 20% higher than the typical software engineer posting on Level.
  • The posting mentions MLflow and Weights And Biases among its tools and skills.
  • Shield AI has 654 other open roles on Level.
  • Posted in the last few days.

AI in this role

mlflowweights-and-biases
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 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

Staff Software Engineer ML Platform (6244) at Shield AI rates 16 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.

  1. ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
  2. ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
  3. ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
  4. ●○○○ 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.

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

MLflowWeights And Biases

Also common in software engineer jobs at this level

Pay

This job starts at
$200k
Typical software engineer job
$167k

This posting starts 20% above the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

  1. What's a project where you used MLflow hands-on?
  2. Walk me through how you've used Weights And Biases in your day-to-day work.

Adapt your resume

  • List these exact terms on your resume: MLflow and Weights And Biases. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
  • Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.

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