Staff Engineer, Autonomy and Motion Planning
Leads the architecture, development, integration, and lifecycle ownership of autonomous behaviors and motion-planning software for unmanned platforms. Requires a relevant engineering degree, production C++ expertise, and at least seven years of experience in autonomy, planning, optimization, integration, or flight controls.
About the job
Responsibilities
- Lead delivery of autonomous behaviors into products as a technical lead, senior individual contributor, and/or hands-on team lead.
- Own the architecture, design, delivery, support, and evolution of safe and effective mission autonomy software throughout the product lifecycle.
- Develop tactical autonomy software for unmanned platforms operating 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 software development lifecycle, including requirements capture, design, implementation, verification, and validation.
- Drive product-line technology roadmaps and reuse of behaviors across projects and portfolios.
- Architect scalable behavior software subsystems interacting with sensor processing, state estimation, peer-to-peer communications, contingency management, actuation, and payload interfaces.
- Collaborate with engineering teams, external teams, vehicle integration teams, and operational subject matter experts to deliver capabilities and align system interfaces.
- Represent software engineering in multi-stakeholder environments involving engineering, business, and sales leadership.
- Travel to co-locate with end users and other teams up to 20% of the time.
Required Qualifications
- BS, MS, 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 full project lifecycles from concept to deployment.
- Ability to mentor junior team members and build team cohesion and capacity.
- Ability to act as technical owner for an entire software system, including stakeholder engagement, requirements definition, roadmap management, team coordination, design, implementation, sustainment, and evolution.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience across multiple technology readiness levels, including transitioning research-grade concepts to operationally ready systems.
- Experience with mission systems integration, 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, and optimization solvers.
- Experience with simulation tools and environments such as AFSIM and NGTS.
- Familiarity with navigation and communications systems.
- Experience across the product delivery lifecycle, from emerging opportunity through system acceptance, deployment, and sustainment.
- Familiarity with systems engineering methodologies.
- Familiarity with high-assurance software development processes such as DO-178C or equivalent MIL-STD standards.
Benefits
- Work at the forefront of AI, autonomy, and next-generation defense systems.
- Operate in an entrepreneurial, mission-driven environment.
- Contribute to international growth and strategic defense partnerships.
- Collaborate with teams solving complex operational challenges.
Skills
C++, Motion Planning, Behavior Planning, Robotics, ROS, Ompl, Optimization Solvers, Flight Controls, Mission Systems Integration, Simulation, Afsim, Ngts, Systems Engineering, Do-178C, Version Control
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