Manager, Dev Platform Engineering (R4979)

San Diego, California

Hivemind Platform Division – Engineering /

Full Time Employee /

On-site

Founded in 2015, 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 and V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft. 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 Development Platform team seeks to improve the development velocity of Hivemind teams and customers by building the core tooling, package management, build systems, and developer workflows used across the Hivemind SDK ecosystem. This team owns the customer-facing developer experience for installing, building, packaging, releasing, and consuming Hivemind SDK components.

The team owns a standardized package manager built within Nix that is used to ship the SDK and enable customers to build their own packages against the SDK. This includes ownership of SDK package definitions, reproducible toolchains, target platforms, package distribution, developer environments, and the CLI experience. This also includes ownership of the licensing mechanism for developer seats and edge devices. The team also owns service-backed platform components including the build cluster service, telemetry and authentication services, and package hosting and distribution services. These services require clear operational ownership, reliability targets, observability, support workflows, and customer-facing expectations.

The Hivemind Development Platform Manager will lead this team as they work with product teams, internal engineers, and customers to identify friction in SDK development workflows and turn those needs into scalable product-facing platform features and self-service capabilities. These decisions impact all Hivemind SDK users, both internal and external. This manager will complement deep individual contributor expertise in build systems, packaging, licensing, and distributed systems by developing the operating model, processes, and service-readiness practices required to stand up and run these product components reliably.

What you'll do:

Lead and grow the Hivemind Development Platform team - coach and develop engineers, manage performance, and foster a culture of technical excellence, user empathy, ownership, and continuous improvement.
Set strategic direction for the Hivemind developer platform, in partnership with Product, Architecture, Software Operations and engineering leadership.
Own the developer platform roadmap, including SDK package management, Nix-based build infrastructure, developer environments, toolchains, target platforms, package distribution, and release workflows, including the operational readiness of service-backed components such as build clusters, package hosting, telemetry, authentication, and licensing.
Own the customer-facing SDK developer experience, including how users install the SDK, activate licenses, pull packages, build their own packages, and integrate with supported target platforms.
Drive cross-functional collaboration with Pilot, EdgeOS, Forge, SoftOps, and customer-facing teams to understand friction points and convert them into clear platform requirements.
Oversee architecture decisions for the standardized Hivemind package manager, CLI, package repository services, toolchain definitions, and reproducible build environments with a practical understanding of distributed systems, service reliability, observability, and operational tradeoffs.
Ensure the platform supports multi-language SDK development across C++, Python, Go, and TypeScript.
Define metrics and signals for SDK developer productivity, package reliability, build reproducibility, release quality, and customer adoption.
Represent the voice of SDK developers in engineering planning by championing ease-of-use, reproducibility, reliability, and clear ownership across the Hivemind ecosystem.
Establish lightweight operational excellence practices for developer platform services, including ownership models, runbooks, monitoring and alerting, service-level expectations, incident response, escalation paths, and release readiness.

Required qualifications:

6+ years of experience in Software Engineering, Platform Engineering, Developer Infrastructure, or equivalent engineering roles
2+ years of people leadership experience
3+ years of strong understanding of C++, Linux, CMake, build systems, and software packaging in production systems.
Strong technical judgment and ability to guide architecture across complex multi-team systems
B.S. or Master’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or related field
Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal
You are organized and methodical
You have a demonstrated record of working hard, being a trustworthy teammate, holding yourself and others to high standards, and being kind to others

Preferred qualifications:

Deep experience with Nix, flakes, binary caches, remote builders, cross-compilation, or custom Linux target platforms
Experience building production-ready developer tools, package managers, SDKs, CLIs, or artifact distribution systems from scratch
Experience with Python, Go, TypeScript, or multi-language package ecosystems
Experience with building production webservices

$160,000 - $240,000 a year

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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.

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.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.

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