Autonomy Software Engineer

We are a leader in providing innovative autonomous systems, advanced optics, and resilient energy solutions to the US Department of Defense, the US Federal Civilian Agencies, allied governments, academic institutions, and commercial entities.

We are proud to be a US owned and operated solutions provider to militaries, civilian governments, commercial entities, universities, and nonprofits worldwide.

With production facilities in multiple locations in the United States and one in Europe, we can get the solutions our clients need quickly and avoiding potential snags involved in shipping equipment between countries.

We offer a positive culture with opportunities for career growth, competitive compensation, and a comprehensive benefits package including health, dental, vision insurances, paid vacation time, paid holidays, additional paid sick time, and a 401(k)-retirement plan with up to 4% company matching contribution.

About Us
We are a leading unmanned aerial system technology innovator, and provides turn-key systems, subsystems, engineering services, training, and operational support to military and commercial customers worldwide.

About the Position

We are seeking an experienced autonomy/AI software engineer that can lead the development of our onboard flight autonomy agent. You will design and implement autonomy algorithms to run on Nvidia Jetson processors to enable autonomous flight behaviors in a variety of real-world environments. This autonomy system will make fundamental decisions about aircraft flight behavior in the absence of human involvement and must handle a variety of dynamic real-world conditions and events including weather, wind, threats, target, and degradations to aircraft state. This is not a laboratory science project. The software you develop will be deployed on fielded aircraft that actively perform operations around the world.

Primary Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of the onboard flight autonomy agent on a Jetson processor and interface the Jetson compute node to the aircraft’s onboard vehicle management system
• Implement and/or integrate autonomous path planning algorithms on a Jetson processor to enable the aircraft to autonomously respond to high-level mission needs
• Implement and/or integrate autonomous flight performance models to enable autonomous generation of optimal flight paths in degraded aircraft states
• Implement a decision agent to autonomous react to contingency situations including external factors (adverse weather, threats) and onboard mission-critical or flight-critical events (lost comms, lost engine, degraded flight control)
• Create a simulation test environment to validate autonomous behavior and test your code in a System Integration Lab (SIL), Hardware Integration Lab (HIL), and Flight Test
• Debug, troubleshoot, and isolate software issues

Required Qualifications

• Experience writing autonomy algorithms that run on Jetson Processors
• Proficient in core languages applicable to Jetson deployment (e.g. C++)
• Solid understanding of algorithms, data structures, and design patterns
• Understanding of path planning algorithms (e.g. Dijkstra, A*, etc.)
• Strong sense of ownership and drive in digging into complex problems

Desired Qualifications

• Understanding of UAS architectures and subsystems
• Understanding of flight-critical software requirements
• Understanding of Flight Behavior and Aircraft Performance
• Experience building a System Integration Lab (SIL) or Hardware Integration Lab (HIL) for Unmanned Aircraft
• Experience supporting flight test
• Practical experience writing firmware/embedded code for a physical device