Senior Autonomy Software Engineer

About the Role

You will own the autonomy and perception stack for an autonomous underwater vehicle platform, joining a small, fast-moving team building vehicles that operate independently in radio-denied environments. This is a greenfield, 0-to-1 opportunity where you will architect and ship production autonomy software on embedded hardware that has never previously been deployed on an autonomous underwater vehicle. You will report directly to the Head of Autonomy and Software and help shape the technical direction of the entire autonomy organization.

What You'll Do

• Design and implement the full autonomy stack from scratch, covering mission planning, path planning, object detection and recognition, obstacle avoidance, and autonomous decision-making for underwater operations.

• Develop both ML-based and classical perception pipelines that run efficiently on power-constrained embedded compute (Nvidia Jetson Orin AGX).

• Drive the vehicle from prototype to executing real multi-day autonomous missions in the field within your first 90 days.

• Support field testing by deploying scale models in dive pools, running sea trials, and performing live telemetry debugging from shore.

• Own your systems end-to-end as a Responsible Engineer, from requirements and architecture through simulation, field validation, and production deployment.

What We're Looking For

• 5 or more years of experience shipping autonomy or perception software on physical autonomous vehicles, UAVs, or robotic platforms.

• Hands-on experience with ML and deep learning for perception tasks such as object detection, tracking, and classification.

• Proficiency in CUDA programming for GPU-accelerated perception and machine learning on embedded GPUs.

• Experience with path planning, sensor fusion, state estimation, or classical computer vision.

• Proven ability to build an autonomy system from scratch rather than inheriting a mature codebase.

• Comfortable working with C++, Python, ROS, PyTorch or TensorFlow, OpenCV, Linux, Git, and Docker in a robotics software development environment.

• Familiarity with simulation environments (SIL/HIL) for autonomy validation.

• Experience at a fast-paced autonomy or defense-tech startup is a strong plus.

• Strong CS, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, or related technical fundamentals; BS or higher required.

• U.S. citizen or green card holder eligible for a security clearance.

• Comfortable working on defense and weapons systems.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary: $160,000 to $230,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.

Location

On-site, full-time in Los Angeles, California, USA.