The realisation of optically detected magnetic resonance via nitrogen vacancy centers in diamond faces challenges at high magnetic fields which include growing energy consumption of control pulses as well as decreasing sensitivities. Here we address these challenges with the design of shaped pulses in microwave control sequences that achieve orders magnitude reductions in energy consumption and concomitant increases in sensitivity when compared to standard top-hat microwave pulses. The method proposed here is general and can be applied to any quantum sensor subjected to pulsed control sequences.We consider the detection of nuclear spins at a strong magnetic field B z 1 T. If the Rabi frequency of the MW driving field is limited, then, for sufficiently high B z , nuclear spins complete several oscillations during a π-pulse. Now we analyse the reduction in sensitivity due to this effect. The Hamiltonian of an NV-nucleus system isHere, S z = |1 1|−|−1 −1|, S x = 1/ √ 2(|1 0|+|−1 0|+H.c.), D = (2π) × 2.87 GHz, γ e ≈ −(2π) × 28.024 GHz/T and A is the hyperfine vector of the NV-nucleus interaction [36]. For B z 1 T, the NV energy splitting between the |0 ↔ | ± 1 arXiv:1805.01741v2 [quant-ph] 31 Oct 2018Here F z (t) is the modulation function that appears as a consequence of the MW pulse sequence, ω n is the nuclear resonance frequency, and A ⊥ x,y are electron-nucleus coupling constants (see Appendix A). We consider periodic pulse sequences of period T such that F z (t) = l f l cos (lω m t) where ω m = 2π T and f l = 2 T T 0 F z (s) cos (lω m s) ds. Examples of these sequences are those of the XY family [37,38] or more sophisticated schemes [17,[39][40][41][42][43][44][45]. For kω m = ω n (resonance condition with the kth harmonic, i.e. for l = k ) Eq. (2) is