Manager of Engineering - Autonomous Pilot Integration

What you'll do

• Lead the Team — Manage a small-to-mid-sized engineering team (typically 5–10 engineers); own performance, growth, leveling, and delivery; run 1:1s, performance reviews, and team rituals.
• Grow the Team via Hiring — Drive hiring for your area: identify the skills you need, partner with recruiting, run interviews, set the bar, and personally close strong candidates.
• Grow Engineers Technically — Mentor engineers through hard problems; create stretch opportunities; give direct, actionable technical feedback; help engineers level up in both skill and impact.
• Aircraft Team Partnership — Maintain an exceptionally close, daily working relationship with the aircraft team that builds and maintains V-BAT — coordinating continuously on platform changes, autopilot interface evolution, sensor integration, hardware/software compatibility, and release planning. For X-BAT, work closely with the aircraft team to define and integrate the flight-autonomy interface.
• Develop & Field Autonomy — Develop & integrate autonomy software solutions onto V-BAT, including payload and sensor integration (e.g., payload computer bring-up, ViDAR, EO/IR), integration with the custom V-BAT autopilot and its control modes (e.g., HSA, waypoint), multi-agent coordination, and customer release cadence — and lead a small team through the design, development, and delivery of a major capability or program.
• Technical Leadership — Lead a small feature crew or sub-program; set technical direction, break down work, unblock the team, and report progress to leadership and stakeholders.
• Hands-on Technical Contribution — Stay active in the code; contribute directly where it serves the team — prototyping new capabilities, taking on deep technical analysis of hard problems, or absorbing critical work during demo crunch.
• Collaboration Across Teams & Partners — Act as a primary technical interface with the Autonomy Capabilities team (motion planning, tactics), the Perception team, the GCS team, feature crews, the Strategic Systems (ACP) portfolio, and customer/program offices (U.S. and international services); author and negotiate ICDs and interface contracts.
• Design & Documentation — Drive design reviews, ICDs, and post-mortems for your area; push the team toward higher rigor and close process gaps that span teams.
• Pre-deployment Preparation — Own the build, configuration, and validation process for mission-ready systems and customer releases; coordinate hardware/software compatibility, mission readiness, release cadence, and operator-facing workflow validation.
• On-site Test & Mission Support — Travel to test sites, customer exercises, and operator training/deployment events to support live mission operations (flight tests, range exercises, multi-agent live events, customer demonstrations, and fielded operator support), including safety checks, system bring-up, and troubleshooting under time-critical constraints.
• Hardware/Software Debugging — Diagnose and resolve integration issues across complex autonomy stacks, payload computers, and embedded systems in lab and field environments — including memory, CPU, and timing profiling under operationally-representative loads.
• Mission Data & Debrief Support — Capture mission and test data, reproduce issues in simulation, and partner with autonomy capability owners to drive fixes back into the next build.
• Continuous Improvement — Build tools and processes to improve integration timelines, test/mission reliability, and team efficiency across deployment cycles.
• C2 Interoperability & Standards — Own the interface contracts with GCS and C2 providers and drive compliance against common message and open-systems standards (e.g., STANAG 4586, UCI, OMS).

Required qualifications

• BS/MS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, and/or similar degree, or equivalent practical experience
• Typically requires a minimum of 7 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; or 5 years and a Master's degree; or 4 years with a PhD; or equivalent work experience
• 2+ years of direct people-management experience (running 1:1s, performance reviews, hiring decisions, growth planning)
• Demonstrated experience building or growing an engineering team — including interviewing, hiring, and onboarding new engineers
• Track record of mentoring engineers and growing their technical skill and career trajectory
• Demonstrated experience leading a small technical team or owning a major capability from design through field delivery
• Experience authoring or negotiating interface contracts / ICDs with internal or external stakeholders
• Direct experience with Group 3 unmanned aircraft, VTOL platforms, or comparable medium-sized unmanned systems
• Experience with multi-agent autonomy
• Strong proficiency in C++, with experience developing or integrating real-time or latency-sensitive systems
• Proficiency in Linux-based development and experience working with embedded systems, shell scripting, and system diagnostics
• Familiarity with middleware, pub-sub, or IPC

Nice-to-haves / Preferred

• Travel Requirement – Members of this team typically travel around 20-30% of the year (to different office locations, customer sites, operator training and deployment events, and integration events)