Senior Staff Software Engineer, Perception (R4985) at Shield AI
Dallas, TX
$233,760–$350,640
Jul 27, 2026
Dallas, TX
Sep 25, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A machine learning engineer role on Shield AI's Hivemind Solutions Perception team, focused on designing, training, fine-tuning, and deploying vision, vision-language, and vision-language-action models for autonomous defense platforms. The work spans building data pipelines and evaluation frameworks through to optimizing models for embedded hardware. Suited to engineers comfortable bridging cutting-edge ML research and production deployment on operational autonomous systems.
Senior level · 10+ years · Secret clearance · Full-time
Pay in the description: $233,760–$350,640
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How this req sits in the market our data
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $122,874 (middle half $87,544–$162,374). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Aug 1, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (8)
The role title is not specified in the posting; the advertised seniority is therefore Unspecified. The 10-year minimum experience figure is derived from the degree-adjusted scale (10 years with a Bachelor's, 9 with a Master's, 7 with a PhD, or equivalent) — the highest stated floor is used as the overall years minimum.
PyTorch and TensorFlow are listed together as 'such as' examples of ML frameworks in the Required section; they are treated as interchangeable alternatives for the same hard-gated requirement rather than two separate gates.
A SECRET clearance is listed as a hard requirement ('Ability to obtain a SECRET clearance'). Candidates need not currently hold one but must be eligible.
No specific work location is stated in the posting; the CBSA/metro field is left blank. Shield AI has offices across the U.S. and internationally, but no single primary location is identified for this role.
Vision-language models and vision-language-action models appear only under Preferred Qualifications and are therefore marked as preferred.
The SOC classification is a genuine judgment call: the role is heavily ML/modeling (15-2051 Data Scientists) but also involves substantial production software engineering, data pipelines, and embedded deployment (15-1252 Software Developers). 15-2051 was chosen because model development, fine-tuning, and evaluation are the primary day-to-day activities described.
Ignored 1 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): vision-language-action models.
Requires a Secret clearance — the cleared population is a small fraction of this occupation, so the real candidate pool is materially smaller than the estimate below, which does not model clearance.
Read the full posting
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