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Mission Systems Lead - Thunder

Costa Mesa, CA (OC-00)💼 Full-time🗓 2026-09-21 → 2026-09-26

Core

Lead the technical development and integration of mission systems for the Thunder autonomous tilt-rotor platform, ensuring interoperability with vehicle stacks and third-party payloads/weapons.

Role type

Senior engineering leader for autonomous aerial mission systems

Builds

Autonomous tilt-rotor platforms (Thunder) integrating mission autonomy, equipment, and payload systems for defense applications

Domain

Defense / Autonomous Aerial Systems / Robotics

Deliverable

production ML models | product features | infrastructure

Required skills

Mission system architecture, weapon/payload integration, systems engineering, high-assurance safety-critical software, distributed software platforms, modeling and simulation, Python, C++, Rust, test suite development, MOSA/WOSA principles, MIL-STD-1760/1553 protocols, STANAG 4586/4671 standards

Preferred skills

Robotics, mechatronics, computer science, remote software troubleshooting, mentoring senior engineers

Technologies

Python, C++, Rust, MIL-STD-1760, MIL-STD-1553, STANAG 4586, STANAG 4671, MOSA, WOSA

Responsibilities

Define and own payload/weapon interface control documents (ICDs), drive architecture selection for robotic mission systems, lead multi-disciplinary engineering teams, drive development processes and lifecycle testing, support vehicle manufacturing and deployment, partner with airworthiness/certification stakeholders

Seniority

Senior, hands-on IC with team leadership

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