Senior Staff Engineer, Autonomy - Tactical Behaviors (R4073)

Responsibilities

• Design tactical autonomy algorithms for unmanned aircraft across air, land, and sea domains with minimal human supervision.
• Develop high-performance software modules for planning, decision-making, and behavior execution in dynamic environments.
• Implement and test behavior architectures for multi-agent coordination, target engagement, reconnaissance, and survivability.
• Integrate classical autonomy with machine learning methods like reinforcement learning.
• Collaborate with perception, planning, simulation, hardware, and flight test teams.
• Deploy to real platforms, participate in field tests and flight demos.
• Analyze mission logs to optimize behaviors.
• Contribute to R&D, roadmap, and prototype new algorithms.
• Support defense programs and adapt to mission needs.
• Travel 10-15% for offices, customer sites, and events.

Requirements

• BS/MS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or similar.
• 10+ years experience (BS), 9+ (MS), 7+ (PhD), or equivalent.
• Proficiency in C++, Python, familiarity with RTOS.
• Background in robotics: motion planning, behavior modeling, decision-making, autonomous systems.
• Experience with unmanned systems (air domain) and algorithms.
• Experience with simulation tools (e.g., AFSIM, NGTS).
• Strong problem-solving, communication, teamwork.
• Ability to obtain SECRET clearance.

Preferred

• ML/RL in autonomy.
• Collaborative behaviors, swarm robotics, distributed decision-making.
• Tactical behaviors for DoD unmanned systems.
• Behaviors across air, ground, maritime.
• Flight demos or live exercises.
• UCI, OMS Standards.