Senior Staff Software Engineer, Autonomous Pilot Integration
Own technical direction for Expeditionary autonomy portfolio on V-BAT and X-BAT unmanned aircraft platforms. Define long-term strategy, lead complex integration of mission behaviors, flight interfaces, payloads, and multi-agent operations while mentoring senior engineers and influencing cross-team architecture.
About the job
What You'll Do
Technical Strategy & Portfolio Leadership – Define and drive the long-term technical direction for Expeditionary autonomy across V-BAT, X-BAT, and future platforms.
Develop & Field Autonomy – Guide development of mission autonomy, payload integration, flight-autonomy interfaces, executive autonomy, and multi-agent capabilities while ensuring successful operational deployment.
Aircraft Team Partnership – Establish long-term technical strategy with the Aircraft team for platform integration, interface evolution, and mission readiness.
Cross-Engineering Leadership – Influence architecture across the Autonomy Capabilities, Perception, GCS, Strategic Systems (ACP), Aircraft, and customer organizations.
Subject Matter Expertise – Serve as the organization's technical expert for complex autonomy integration challenges spanning software, hardware, and operations.
Design & Engineering Excellence – Lead architecture reviews, engineering standards, interface definitions, and organization-wide technical improvements.
Mentorship & Organizational Growth – Mentor senior engineers, develop technical leaders, contribute to leveling frameworks, and partner on senior hiring.
Mission Readiness & Operational Excellence – Guide customer releases, deployment strategy, and mission validation while supporting critical operational events.
Continuous Improvement – Drive long-term improvements to engineering processes, integration workflows, testing infrastructure, and developer experience.
C2 Interoperability & Open Systems – Define technical strategy for command-and-control interoperability and adoption of open-systems standards.
Hiring & Developing Technical Talent – Define the technical hiring bar for senior engineering roles, partner with engineering managers on long-term staffing strategy, and help grow the organization's technical capabilities.
Travel Requirement – Members of this team typically travel around 10–20% of the year to different office locations, customer sites, operator training events, flight tests, and integration exercises.
Required Qualifications
- BS/MS in a relevant engineering discipline or equivalent experience.
- 10+ years of relevant experience.
- Expert-level C++ and Linux systems development experience.
- Demonstrated experience defining technical strategy across multiple engineering teams or programs.
- Proven track record influencing architecture and solving highly complex systems integration challenges.
- Experience mentoring senior engineers and driving engineering excellence.
- Ability to obtain a SECRET clearance.
Preferred Qualifications
- Extensive experience with Group 3 UAS, VTOL platforms, or comparable autonomous systems.
- Experience defining flight-autonomy interfaces or custom autopilot integrations.
- Experience deploying autonomy to operational military systems.
- Experience with international defense customers.
- Experience with STANAG 4586, UCI, OMS, and open-systems architectures.
- Experience shaping engineering practices across an organization.
Skills
C++, Linux, Autonomy Architecture, Systems Integration, Uas, Vtol, Stanag 4586, Uci, Oms, Motion Planning, Perception, Hivemindsdk
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