Autonomous Drone Software Engineer - Distributed Systems

Auterion AG; Zürich; On-site; CHF 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible working hours

Stock Options

Generous holiday allowance

Company pension plan

Car parking

Enhanced maternity & paternity leave

Mental health and wellbeing support

Job summary

Auterion AG in Zürich is seeking a hands-on Autonomous Drone Software Engineer to join a swarming programme. You will contribute across autonomy stack, influence architecture, and own feature development with impact on flight-test and deployment.

Ideal candidates are self-starters who can work independently, handle ambiguity, and drive projects to completion. The role involves collaboration with hardware, product managers, and external partners and offers growth opportunities within a

Qualifications

• 3+ years of professional engineering experience in robotics, embedded systems, or distributed systems.
• Deep proficiency in modern C++, with practical experience designing, reasoning about, and debugging highly concurrent systems.
• Embedded systems experience working close to hardware on real-time or safety-critical platforms (e.g., avionics, automotive, robotics).
• Strong architectural understanding of distributed systems, with the ability to deliberately evaluate and select consensus designs.
• Familiarity with robust release management, versioned artifacts, and pinned dependencies.
• Experience with PX4, MAVLink, and related drone software ecosystems is a plus
• EU citizenship required

Responsibilities

• Take ownership and drive the development of new features across the autonomy stack and partner integrations.
• Collaborate closely with hardware engineers, product managers, and external partners to define system requirements and translate them into robust software architecture.
• Design and implement robust distributed state machines, leader election protocols, and fault-tolerant architectures.
• Deliver clean, readable and maintainable code while confidently managing complex concurrency and contention scenarios.
• Develop and run rigorous tests utilizing SITL/HITL simulation environments to validate code prior to physical deployment.
• Actively participate in code reviews, architectural discussions, and technical documentation to elevate the team's engineering standards.
• Act decisively during flight-test investigations, applying strong engineering judgment to physical failure modes and release safety

Skills

Modern C++

Embedded systems

Distributed systems

System architecture

Release management

PX4/MAVLink experience

EU citizenship

Tools

PX4

MAVLink

Job description

Auterion AG in Zürich is seeking a hands-on Autonomous Drone Software Engineer to join a swarming programme. You will contribute across autonomy stack, influence architecture, and own feature development with impact on flight-test and deployment.

Ideal candidates are self-starters who can work independently, handle ambiguity, and drive projects to completion. The role involves collaboration with hardware, product managers, and external partners and offers growth opportunities within a