Software Engineer, Autonomy

Location: Remote — Contiguous United States
Company Stage of Funding: Venture-Backed / $59M Raised
Office Type: Remote with ~10–15% travel to HQ and test sites
Salary: $175,000–$250,000 base + competitive equity

Company Description

We're representing an aerospace and autonomy company building next-generation autonomous aircraft and the command-and-control software required to coordinate large fleets of heterogeneous autonomous systems.

Founded in 2022, the company is developing an aircraft designed specifically for swarming alongside software that enables a single operator to coordinate potentially thousands of autonomous assets across air and maritime environments.

The company has raised approximately $59M and is backed by prominent technology investors. Its team brings experience from organizations including Scaled Composites, Airbus, Archer Aviation, Blue Origin, and Boom Supersonic, with backgrounds spanning novel aircraft development, autonomous systems, and large-scale defense programs.

The engineering organization is intentionally small and highly technical, giving engineers significant ownership over foundational architecture and systems that will ultimately operate on real hardware in demanding environments.

What You Will Do

• Build core autonomy software for coordinating heterogeneous autonomous aircraft and maritime systems.
• Develop track correlation, sensor fusion, and multi-target tracking systems operating across multiple assets and sensors.
• Build systems that allow multiple autonomous platforms to operate together rather than treating each vehicle as an isolated system.
• Design and maintain foundational autonomy architecture, data models, and system interfaces as the platform scales.
• Work across planning, estimation, filtering, state reasoning, perception, and control rather than operating within a narrowly defined specialty.
• Integrate command-and-control software with third-party autonomous hardware.
• Understand unfamiliar sensors, communication protocols, and vehicle behavior and translate them into reliable integrations.
• Develop production robotics software using languages such as C/C++, Rust, and Golang.
• Work with technologies including ROS2/DDS, Protobuf, gRPC, ZeroMQ, Kalman filtering, and sensor-fusion systems.
• Debug autonomy software directly against physical hardware and real-world operating conditions.
• Participate in field testing and validation events when necessary.
• Help establish the technical foundation for an autonomy organization expected to grow substantially over the coming year.

Ideal Background

• 3–8 years of professional experience in robotics or autonomy software engineering.
• Strong production programming experience with C/C++, Rust, or Golang.
• Experience building autonomy software at a robotics startup, autonomous vehicle company, defense technology startup, or similarly hands-on engineering environment.
• Strong systems-level robotics experience beyond pure perception or embedded development.
• Hands-on experience with areas such as:
  • Sensor fusion and state estimation
  • Track correlation and multi-target tracking
  • Planning and route planning
  • Filtering and state reasoning
  • Multi-agent or multi-robot coordination
• Experience controlling or coordinating multiple autonomous assets simultaneously.
• Experience integrating software with real robotic hardware and debugging problems that only emerge in the field.
• Strong understanding of how autonomy systems behave differently in production versus simulation.
• BS or higher in Computer Science, Robotics, Mathematics, or a related technical discipline from a strong program.
• Generalist engineering mindset and willingness to move across multiple autonomy problem areas.
• Must reside in the contiguous United States.
• Must be a U.S. Person — U.S. citizen or green card holder — and eligible to obtain a U.S. government security clearance.
• Comfortable working on technology supporting defense and national-security applications.

Preferred

• Production experience with track correlation or heterogeneous sensor fusion on fielded systems.
• Experience with swarming, multi-agent systems, or coordinating fleets of autonomous vehicles.
• Experience at autonomy-focused companies such as Shield AI, Anduril, Skydio, Saronic, Saildrone, Zipline, Waymo, Nuro, Aurora, Zoox, Boston Dynamics, Gecko Robotics, or adjacent organizations.
• Experience with UAVs, autonomous aircraft, maritime autonomy, or other complex field robotics.
• Experience with ROS2, DDS, Kalman filters, Protobuf, gRPC, or ZeroMQ.
• Experience making foundational architecture decisions for early-stage robotics systems.
• PhD in robotics or autonomy with substantial hands-on systems work; highly relevant doctoral work can offset fewer years of industry experience.
• Startup experience where engineers worked across hardware, software, and field deployment rather than within highly siloed teams.

Candidates whose experience is exclusively firmware/embedded engineering, pure perception or ML research, or narrowly scoped academic research are unlikely to be a fit. The team is specifically looking for engineers who combine strong software implementation with broad autonomy systems judgment.

Compensation and Benefits

• Base salary: $175,000–$250,000.
• Competitive equity.
• Fully remote within the contiguous United States.
• Flexible U.S. timezone.
• Approximately 10–15% travel to company headquarters and test sites for integration and validation work.
• Three to five planned hires for the team.
• Small engineering organization with significant individual ownership and greenfield technical work.
• No visa sponsorship; candidates must already meet the U.S. Person/security-clearance eligibility requirement.
• Interview process includes recruiter and business conversations, a one-hour technical coding round, and an onsite interview loop followed by debrief and reference checks.
• The technical screen evaluates core coding and autonomy problem-solving; candidates should be comfortable with graph traversal problems.
• Best suited for engineers who want to remain close to real hardware and production autonomy rather than working exclusively on research or simulation.