Autonomy Software Engineer

About You:

You are a versatile software engineer with a passion for aviation, robotics, and autonomous systems. You are comfortable working across technical domains, from perception and understanding to decision making and human-machine teaming. You take pride in delivering high-quality, maintainable code, collaborate well with other engineers and teams, and like to independently dig into new problems. You’re excited to see your code fly in the real world.

Responsibilities:

• Develop software across the stack of an aircraft autonomy system, contributing to lower level embedded systems and higher level autonomy function areas as needed.
• Implement and integrate algorithms for perception, reasoning, decision making, planning, and execution in support of autonomous airborne operations.
• Collaborate with domain leads to understand architecture, requirements, and design intent for specific capabilities.
• Contribute to simulation, integration, and flight test activities to validate autonomy software in relevant environments.
• Write, test, document and review code according to Merlin’s development standards.
• Collaborate across Merlin to develop novel, certifiable systems to solve the toughest problems in aviation and autonomy.

Qualifications:

• Degree in computer science, aerospace engineering, robotics, or a related field.
• BS and 3+ or MS and 2+ years of experience developing software for robotic or autonomous systems.
• Experience with state machines, behavior trees, or task planning algorithms.
• Experience with route, path and trajectory planning.
• Experience with Linux and open-source development tools.
• Experience with overall product development cycle, including design, testing, and troubleshooting at the system level as well as at the software component level.
• Experience with both Python and C++.
• Experience with ROS, DDS or similar robotics middleware.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to learn and contribute across different technical domains.

Nice to Have:

• Experience developing autonomy software for aircraft, drones, or other high-integrity systems.
• Experience with perception systems, sensor fusion, or world modeling concepts.
• Experience with multi-agent collaboration and human-machine interfaces.
• Experience with system integration, simulation, or flight testing of autonomous platforms.
• Experience with hardware and software integration and debugging.
• Pilot license and flight experience is a plus.