Senior Staff Engineer, Autonomy and Motion Planning
Leads the architecture, development, integration, and lifecycle evolution of autonomy and motion-planning software for unmanned platforms across multiple operational domains. The role requires production C++ expertise, 7+ years of relevant experience, technical leadership, and eligibility for a U.S. Secret clearance.
About the job
Responsibilities
- Develop tactical autonomy software enabling unmanned platforms to perform complex missions across air, land, sea, and space domains with minimal human supervision.
- Implement and test behaviors for multi-agent coordination, target engagement, reconnaissance, and survivability in contested scenarios.
- Work across the full software development lifecycle, including requirements capture, design, implementation, verification, and validation.
- Champion product-line technology roadmapping and reuse of behaviors across projects and portfolios.
- Architect behaviors as scalable software subsystems interacting with sensor processing, state estimation, peer-to-peer communications, contingency management, actuation, and payload interfaces.
- Deliver capabilities to vehicle platforms with internal and external engineering teams, supporting architecture and capability evolution.
- Collaborate with external teams, vehicle integration teams, and operational subject-matter experts to align system interfaces and requirements.
- Represent software engineering interests in multi-stakeholder environments involving engineering, business, and sales leadership.
- Travel up to 20% to work with end users and other teams.
Requirements
- Bachelor's, master's, or PhD in Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field.
- Proficiency in production-level C++ software development.
- 7+ years of experience in software subsystem scheduling and integration, behavior planning, task and resource allocation, motion planning, optimization, or flight controls.
- Experience with collaborative software development tools for version control, issue tracking, code reviews, and release management.
- Ability to lead multidisciplinary teams, set technical direction, and manage project lifecycles from concept through deployment.
- Ability to mentor junior team members and build team cohesion and capacity.
- Ability to own an entire software system, including stakeholder engagement, requirements definition, roadmap management, team coordination, design, implementation, sustainment, and evolution.
- Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Secret security clearance.
Nice-to-haves
- Experience across multiple technology readiness levels and transitioning research-grade concepts to operational systems.
- Mission systems integration experience, including integration events or flight demonstrations.
- Experience with collaborative mission planning, behavior planning, synchronized teaming, automated red-force versus blue-force tactics, motion planning, weapons target assignment, sensor-target pairing, sensor-centric control laws, collision avoidance, geofencing, or safety monitoring.
- Experience across multiple operational effects and domains, including air, space, maritime, or ground systems.
- Experience with FOSS robotics software such as ROS, OMPL, or optimization solvers.
- Experience with simulation tools such as AFSIM or NGTS.
- Familiarity with navigation and communications systems, systems engineering methodologies, and high-assurance software development processes such as DO-178C or equivalent MIL-STD standards.
- Experience across the product delivery lifecycle from emerging opportunity through system acceptance, deployment, and sustainment.
Skills
C++, Motion Planning, Behavior Planning, Optimization, Robotics, ROS, Ompl, Afsim, Ngts, Flight Controls, Mission Systems Integration, Systems Engineering, Do-178C, Version Control, Peer-To-Peer Communications
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