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Senior Staff Software Engineer, Autonomy Capabilities (R4587)

San Mateo, California💼 Full-time🗓 2026-09-01 → 2026-09-26

Core

Design and implement tactical autonomy algorithms for unmanned aircraft to perform complex missions across air, land, and sea domains with minimal human supervision.

Role type

Senior Staff Software Engineer (Autonomy Capabilities)

Builds

High-performance software modules for planning, decision-making, and behavior execution in dynamic environments

Domain

Defense technology, unmanned aerial systems, robotics

Deliverable

production ML models | product features

Required skills

C++, Python, real-time operating systems (RTOS), motion planning, behavior modeling, decision-making, autonomous system design, unmanned system algorithms (air domain), simulation tools (AFSIM, NGTS)

Preferred skills

ML/RL techniques in autonomy pipelines, collaborative behaviors, swarm robotics, distributed decision-making, tactical behaviors for DoD/government programs, multi-vehicle behaviors, flight demo support, UCI and OMS Standards

Responsibilities

Design tactical autonomy algorithms for unmanned aircraft; Develop high-performance software modules for planning and behavior execution; Implement and test behavior architectures for multi-agent coordination; Work at the intersection of classical autonomy and machine learning; Collaborate with cross-functional teams including perception, planning, simulation, hardware, and flight test; Deploy autonomy capabilities to real platforms and participate in field tests; Analyze mission logs and performance data to optimize behavior models; Contribute to the autonomy roadmap by researching and prototyping new algorithms; Support defense-focused programs by adapting autonomy solutions to evolving mission sets

Seniority

Senior Staff, hands-on IC with strategic impact

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