Senior Navigation Engineer

TechTree; Toulouse; Hybride; EUR 90 000 - 130 000; Plein temps

Résumé du poste

TechTree, based in Toulouse, France, is seeking a Senior Navigation Engineer to own significant parts of the navigation stack, including state estimation, visual-inertial navigation, geo-localization, and sensor fusion. You will design the software architecture that connects these components and ensure reliable flight on real aircraft.

The role blends research and production as you transform ideas into robust code, validate against flight data, optimize for edge hardware, and mentor the team

Qualifications

• Degree in computer science, engineering, robotics, applied mathematics, or a related field.
• Experience with real sensor data and robust production code.
• Strong math foundations: coordinate frames and 3D geometry, probabilistic estimation.
• Experience turning research into production software.
• Working knowledge of French.

Responsabilités

• Drive architecture and system design decisions for the navigation stack
• Write, review, and ship high-quality production code
• Design failure detection, consistency checks, and confidence metrics
• Design and build new navigation modes and improvements to the localization pipeline
• Turn research ideas and papers into robust, tested code that runs on real hardware
• Set engineering standards, review other engineers' work, and mentor junior team members
• Debug the hardest problems across software, robotics, and sensor data
• Help shape the technical roadmap and decide what to build next and why
• A degree in computer science, engineering, robotics, applied mathematics, or a related field

Connaissances

3D geometry

state estimation

numerical methods

sensor data

debugging problems

modular architecture

software design

interfaces

testing

CI workflows

Linux

version control

English communication

Formation

Master's degree or PhD in a relevant field

Outils

ROS

PX4

ArduPilot

NVIDIA Jetson

Description du poste

GPS fails. In contested airspace it's jammed, spoofed, and gone. When it disappears, most drones are blind. Ours are not. We build the module that lets a drone navigate by what it sees, no satellites required. It's already flying with leading aerospace manufacturers and defense agencies in Europe, in places where nothing else works. We're a small team out of Toulouse doing hard things fast.

About the role

Our navigation system is the core of what we build, and this role is about building the algorithms and software architecture that make it reliable in flight.

As a Senior Navigation Engineer, you'll own significant parts of the navigation stack, including state estimation, visual-inertial navigation, geo-localization, sensor fusion, and the software architecture that connects them. You'll work on both the mathematics of navigation and the production code that has to run reliably on real aircraft.

You'll write the hard code, but you'll also decide how the system is put together: how measurements are represented, how uncertainty is handled, how different navigation modes interact, how failures are detected, and how the stack remains maintainable, extensible, and performant as we add new sensors, aircraft, and customers.

A lot of the work sits at the boundary between research and production. You might take an idea from a paper, derive and implement the estimator, validate it against recorded flight data, optimize it for edge hardware, and then see it fly.

We're looking for someone who has done this kind of work before: someone comfortable with 3D geometry, estimation, numerical methods, real sensor data, and difficult debugging problems where the documentation runs out early. Someone who can turn a promising algorithm into robust production code and raise the engineering standard of the whole navigation team.

Key responsibilities

Drive architecture and system design decisions for the navigation stack

Write, review, and ship high-quality production code, and make the codebase maintainable, extensible, and performant over time

Design failure detection, consistency checks, and confidence metrics so the system knows when its navigation solution can and cannot be trusted

Design and build new navigation modes and improvements to the localization pipeline

Turn research ideas and papers into robust, tested code that runs reliably on real hardware

Set engineering standards, review other engineers' work, and mentor more junior members of the team

Debug the hardest problems across software, robotics, and sensor data, often with little documentation to lean on

Help shape the technical roadmap and decide what to build next and why

A degree in computer science, engineering, robotics, applied mathematics, or a related field

Typically 3+ years of relevant experience - we care more about the systems you've owned and shipped than the exact number of years

Strong software design fundamentals, including modular architecture, interfaces, testing, and maintainable object-oriented design

Solid mathematical foundations, especially coordinate frames and 3D geometry, probabilistic estimation, filtering, numerical stability, sensor modelling, and uncertainty

Experience making architecture and system design decisions on a real product

Comfortable working in Linux and with modern version control and CI workflows

Comfortable using modern AI-assisted development tools while maintaining strong engineering judgment and ownership of the resulting code

Self-driven and comfortable in problem spaces that are not well documented

Good communication skills in English

Preferred qualifications

Master's degree or PhD in a relevant field

Direct experience with computer vision, SLAM, visual inertial odometry, or geo-localization

Experience with robotics, drones, or edge deployment (for example ROS, PX4, ArduPilot, or NVIDIA Jetson)

Strong grounding in numerical methods, optimization, or state estimation (Kalman filters and related)

Experience mentoring engineers or leading a small technical effort

Background in defense, aerospace, or another safety-critical or regulated domain

Working knowledge of French

What you might work on in your first year

Designing how the navigation stack is structured so it stays fast and reliable as we add modes and customers

Making navigation reliable through aggressive flight dynamics, degraded visual conditions, and intermittent measurements

Building replay, benchmarking, and evaluation infrastructure to reproduce complete flights and automatically detect navigation regressions

Taking new navigation or state-estimation techniques from research papers to robust, real-time production code running onboard an aircraft

Leading the effort to reduce localization drift across difficult terrain types

Raising the engineering standards of the team through reviews, tooling, and mentorship

Logistics

Full-time. On-site in Toulouse, France, close to the team and the hardware. Senior individual contributor level. Because we serve defense customers, some work may be subject to export control or clearance requirements depending on the program.