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Principal Autonomy Engineer
Not specifiedNot specifiedAI & Machine LearningDefense Technology
Lead the architecture and hands-on development of an autonomous navigation stack for unmanned surface vessels. Set technical direction for the autonomy group and own the stack’s interfaces, safety architecture, and core design decisions.
Responsibilities
- Own the end-to-end architecture of the autonomous navigation stack, from world model through planning and decision-making to vehicle interface.
- Define the world model contract, including representation, uncertainty, timing, synchronization, coordinate frames, confidence, and degradation modes.
- Define the vehicle interface contract, including command semantics, platform guarantees, latency, failure behavior, and cross-platform portability.
- Design the autonomy system’s module structure, behavior architecture, behavior arbitration, state ownership, and data flow.
- Design safety and fail-safe architecture, including degradation paths, safe-state transitions, operator intervention, and fault containment.
- Contribute hands-on to planning and decision-making code for the most challenging problems.
- Lead technical direction and hiring as the autonomy group grows.
Requirements
- At least 8 years building autonomous systems, including architecting a complete autonomy stack operating in unstructured real-world environments.
- Deep hands-on software experience on autonomous edge platforms.
- Demonstrated ownership of system-level interface contracts across perception, autonomy, and platform layers.
- Strong command of ROS 2 or comparable real-time robotics middleware, modern C++, and embedded-compute constraints.
- Ability to maintain architectural coherence in a small team under schedule pressure.
- Strong systems-engineering skills applied to autonomy stacks.
- Proven technical leadership, including setting direction, assigning ownership, reviewing work, and developing engineers.
Nice to have
- Experience with maritime, unmanned surface vessel, or naval systems; familiarity with COLREGs.
- Experience delivering UAV, UGV, or automotive autonomy in a defense or regulated program.
- Experience defining acceptance criteria and evidence for government customers.
- Experience with simulation, software-in-the-loop testing, and scenario-based validation.