Lead - Autonomy (UAVs)

About the Role As the Autonomy Lead, you will architect, build, and lead the development of the full autonomy stack-ranging from perception-informed navigation to path planning and robust control algorithms. You will collaborate closely with our firmware, perception, and systems integration teams to deploy real-time autonomy solutions on actual flight hardware. You will also play a key leadership role: mentoring engineers, driving roadmap decisions, and ensuring high performance and reliability in mission-critical environments.

Key

Responsibilities Architecture & Development Design and implement core components of the autonomy stack: state estimation, motion planning, trajectory generation, and control. Drive the integration of perception, mapping, and localization systems into robust navigation algorithms. Own the autonomy system architecture, ensuring it meets real-time, safety, and performance constraints. Optimize for performance on embedded compute platforms (e.g., NVIDIA Jetson, PX4 Companion Computers). Leadership & Strategy Define the technical roadmap for the autonomy team in alignment with product and platform needs. Mentor and manage a team of autonomy, controls, and navigation engineers. Drive code quality, system reliability, and testing strategy, including simulation-in-the-loop (SITL) and real-world test flights. Represent the autonomy function in cross-functional meetings with firmware, perception, hardware, and product teams. Testing & Deployment Develop simulation environments for autonomy testing (e.g., Gazebo, AirSim, or custom frameworks). Validate algorithms through real-world flight testing and flight log analysis. Collaborate with systems integration engineers to tune algorithms on physical platforms under various flight conditions. Research & Innovation Stay current with state-of-the-art developments in robotics, drone autonomy, and reinforcement learning. Evaluate and integrate promising approaches from academia and industry (e.g., learning-based control, SLAM, dynamic path planning).

Requirements

Qualifications Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Robotics, Aerospace, Computer Science, or a related field. 6+ years of experience in robotics, autonomous systems, or UAV software. Strong expertise in at least 2 of the following: SLAM / state estimation Motion planning (e.g., RRT*, A*, MPC) Control theory (PID, LQR, nonlinear control) Proficient in C++ and Python, with experience in ROS, PX4/Ardupilot integration, and real-time systems. Hands-on experience with robot simulators (e.g., Gazebo, AirSim, Isaac Sim) and flight test environments. Proven track record of deploying autonomy software on physical platforms.

Benefits

Why Join Us Work at the forefront of autonomy, AI, and UAV innovation. Influence architecture and decisions from the ground up. Collaborate with a highly skilled multidisciplinary team. Competitive compensation and equity options.