Head of Autonomy, Maritime

Dominion Dynamics; Ottawa; On-site; CAD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Equity equity grants

Health benefits

Job summary

Dominion Dynamics seeks a senior leader to define and drive maritime autonomy for surface and subsurface vessels. You will guide perception, navigation, and mission autonomy, ensuring robust operation with limited or no communication links.

You will lead the autonomy team, collaborate with hardware, software, and simulation groups, and oversee sea trials with operator feedback. You will integrate with AuraNet, ensure safe COLREGS-compliant behavior, and shape deterministic and probabilistic

Qualifications

• Senior engineering leader with maritime autonomy in water
• Experience with navigation/localization without GNSS
• Leadership of engineers toward a roadmap
• Judgement on deterministic vs probabilistic policies
• Proven test campaigns and fielded autonomy
• Based in Ottawa or willing to relocate (on-site)

Responsibilities

• Set maritime autonomy roadmap with milestones.
• Build perception and navigation for surface/subsurface (radar, EO/IR, acoustic).
• Design mission autonomy for intermittent links; decide autonomous vs operator actions.
• Ensure safe, COLREGS-compliant navigation at sea.
• Integrate with AuraNet for tasking and mesh communications.
• Decide policy placement (deterministic vs probabilistic) for simulation and water.
• Hire and lead the maritime autonomy team; conduct sea trials with operator feedback.

Skills

Maritime autonomy

Team leadership

Roadmap planning

GNSS-free navigation

Perception systems

Mission autonomy

Tools

AuraNet

ROS 2

Simulation tooling

Job description

Head of Autonomy, Maritime

Location: Ottawa Office, On-Site

Reports to: Director of Autonomy

Type: Full-Time

The Role

The ocean takes away most of what autonomy normally leans on. No GPS below the surface and a jammed one above it, a comms link measured in bits per second when it exists at all, a horizon full of sea clutter, and weather that moves the vehicle while it is still deciding. Our systems are in the field with the CAF now, including in Canadian ice, and a vessel has to keep making sensible decisions for hours after the last message got through.

You set the technical direction for maritime autonomy at Dominion — surface and subsurface vessels that navigate, perceive, and finish a mission with no link home. You build it on the same autonomy foundation as our air and ground systems and integrate it with AuraNet, our C2, mesh, and tasking layer, so maritime capability is something the stack inherits rather than a per-hull one-off. You lead the maritime autonomy team and grow it.

What You'll Do

• Set the maritime autonomy roadmap — capability by capability, hull by hull — and turn it into a sequenced technical plan with real milestones.

• Build perception and navigation for the surface and subsurface environment: radar, EO/IR, and acoustic sensing through clutter, spray, glare, fog, and ice, and localization that holds without GNSS.

• Design mission autonomy for long endurance on an intermittent link — what the vessel decides alone, what it holds for the operator, and how it behaves when the link stays down.

• Make navigation safe and legible at sea: collision avoidance and COLREGS-consistent behaviour that a bridge watch and a certifying authority can both follow.

• Integrate with AuraNet for tasking, telemetry, and mesh, designed for bandwidth-constrained and disconnected operation from the start.

• Decide where deterministic policies belong and where probabilistic ones do, and set the standard both have to clear — in simulation and on the water — before they reach an operator.

• Hire and lead the maritime autonomy team, working shoulder to shoulder with hardware, software, and simulation.

• Get on the boat. Sea trials, integration, and operator feedback, in days not quarters.

What You Bring

• A senior engineering leader who has put maritime autonomy in the water — USVs, UUVs, or autonomous vessels that operated in real sea states, not only in a tank or a simulator.

• Depth in the marine autonomy problem: navigation and localization without GNSS, perception in sea clutter, collision avoidance and COLREGS, and mission autonomy under acoustic or satcom bandwidth limits.

• Experience leading engineers — a team you hired, structured, and set technical direction for, against a roadmap you were accountable for.

• Command of both deterministic policies (the system follows predefined rules consistently) and probabilistic ones (the system decides under uncertainty and changing conditions), and clear judgement about which the mission calls for.

• A track record of taking autonomy from prototype to fielded system: test campaigns, failure analysis, and the evidence that convinced someone to trust it.

• Based in Ottawa, or ready to relocate — this role is on-site with the team and close to the customer.

Nice to Have

• Arctic or cold-water operations, and what ice and sea state do to sensors and vehicle behaviour.

• Naval or coast guard programs, or mission context in MDA, ASW, mine countermeasures, or maritime ISR.

• Multi-vehicle and collaborative tasking — across vessels, or across vessels and aircraft.

• Simulation-in-the-loop and sim-to-real for validating autonomy before it sails.

• ROS 2 and edge compute on constrained marine hardware.

• Certification or safety-case work for uncrewed vessels — Transport Canada, class societies, or IMO MASS.

No defence background required.

We've hired people who didn't tick every box.

Why Join Us

Building something meaningful starts with the right people.

At Dominion Dynamics, you’ll:

• Shape Canada’s future by building real defence capability for the CAF and our allies.

• Make decisions that ship in a high-trust environment with short feedback loops and rapid iteration.

• Move fast, field faster, and work directly with the operator — our systems are in the field with the CAF now.

• Have an impact from day one with equity, responsibility, and direct access to leadership.

If you’re curious, hands-on, and driven by the opportunity to make a difference, this is where you belong!

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive base salary and company equity*

• Comprehensive health benefits

• Additional equity granted based on impact*

*Equity awarded to full time employees only.