Engineering Manager, Autonomy Planning & Behaviors
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Nov 2, 2026. First seen by Alion on Aug 12, 2025. Merlin Labs scores A on the Alion truth index.
About You:
You are an experienced engineer with a background in autonomous systems, aviation, and robotics who wants to lead Merlin’s direction when it comes to decision making and behaviors for mission autonomy. You understand both the commercial and military aviation domains, and enjoy pushing the boundaries on crewed and uncrewed technology to make aviation safer. You have deep experience in leading and managing large teams of engineers as they deploy autonomy, and have a broad understanding of the techniques enabling mission management.
Responsibilities:
Drive the technical direction and delivery of autonomous decision making, behavior execution, and motion planning capabilities for airborne systems.
Guide, mentor, and manage a team of engineers across a broad range of experience levels in developing software capabilities.
Identify gaps and define staffing needs to develop and deliver decision making and behavior capabilities.
Ensure the decision making, behaviors, and motion planning technical plans align with short term R&D objectives, long term objectives, and the Merlin technology roadmap.
Support simulation, integration, and flight test activities to validate real-world performance.
Collaborate across Merlin to develop novel systems to solve the toughest problems in aviation and autonomy.
Qualifications:
Degree in Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, Robotics Engineering, or a related subject.
Strong experience developing software for autonomous systems.
Several years of experience providing direct management and technical leadership to a team of at least 10 engineers at different levels.
Broad understanding and familiarity with in one or more of the following:
Mission management frameworks such as behavior trees, hierarchical task networks, state machines, petri nets.
Single- and multi-vehicle autonomy, resource allocation, and decision making algorithms.
Airborne contingency and emergency management.
Machine learning for complex decision making and behavior generation.
Familiarity with modern software development workflows and practices, including version control, pipelines, and unit testing, and peer review.
Experience with overall product development cycle, including design, testing, and troubleshooting at the system level as well as at the software component level.
Proficiency writing both Python and C++.
Familiarity with simulation software, especially aircraft simulation.
Experience with proposal writing and technical roadmap development.
Nice to Have:
Experience with Zenoh, ROS, DDS, or similar middleware for robotics/autonomy systems.
Experience with government open architectures such as A-GRA, OMS and FACE.
Experience developing and/or using modern avionics systems.
Experience with hardware and software integration and debugging.
Experience with flight testing (uncrewed or crewed aircraft).
Awareness of aviation certification standards such as DO-178.
Pilot license and flight experience is a plus.
Logistics:
- We welcome remote applicants for this role, with a preference for candidates based in or willing to relocate to Boston, MA for a hybrid work schedule at our HQ.