Drone Engineer — UAV Design & Flight Testing | Drone R&D | Chennai

Cams Biometrics; Chennai District; On-site; INR 432,000 - 720,000; Full time

Job summary

Cams Biometrics in Chennai is seeking an experienced hardware-focused drone engineer to join a hands-on team building a drone platform. You will select frames, motors, power budgets, and flight control integration, then validate with field tests.

You will work closely with hardware and electronics engineers and the founder to shape a production-ready drone capable of delivery and airframe optimization. This is a collaborative, ownership-driven role.

Qualifications

• Designed and built a working drone from scratch with frame, motors, flight controller, and airborne integration.
• Tuned a flight controller (PX4/ArduPilot/Betaflight) and can explain changes and reasoning.
• Diagnosed real flight failures (crash, flyaway, yaw drift) and traced root causes.
• Comfortable with power system design: battery sizing, current draw, C-ratings, ESC selection.
• Able to read datasheets and flight logs fluently.

Responsibilities

• Own airframe configuration, weight budget, and vibration management.
• Lead propulsion, power, and battery architecture decisions and performance calculations.
• Integrate avionics: flight controller, sensors, telemetry, and failsafe design.
• Coordinate payload integration and testing across bench, tethered, and field tests.
• Collaborate with electronics engineers and founder to drive production readiness.

Skills

Drone design

Flight controller tuning

Power system design

Datasheet reading

Flight log analysis

Tools

Pixhawk

PX4

ArduPilot

Betaflight

Jetson/Embedded compute

Job description

Cams Biometrics - Shollinganallur, OMR, Chennai - Experience: 4+yrs - Salary: Up to 7.2 LPA (No deductions)

We are building a drone platform from the ground up at Cams Biometrics, Chennai. From UAV to Manned Vehicle. This is our primary long‑term product line, not a side project. This is a hands‑on role in a close‑knit team. You will be selecting motors, routing power, wiring flight controllers, tuning PIDs, and standing in a field watching the aircraft fly — then working out with the team why it did what it did.

You will work alongside our hardware and electronics engineers, and directly with the founder. Drone development does not happen in isolation — airframe decisions change the power budget, the power budget changes the payload, the payload changes the flight envelope. We want someone who thinks across those boundaries with other people, not around them.

We are a small team building something ambitious. Everyone here has real ownership, and everyone helps everyone.

What you’ll own

• Airframe — configuration selection, structures, materials, weight budget, vibration management
• Propulsion & power — motor and ESC sizing, propeller matching, battery and BMS architecture, power distribution, thrust-to-weight and endurance calculations
• Avionics — flight controller selection and integration (Pixhawk / PX4 / ArduPilot or custom), IMU/GPS/sensor integration, telemetry and RF links, failsafe design
• Payload integration — camera and compute module mounting, gimbal/vibration isolation, payload power and data paths, release mechanisms for delivery
• Flight test — bench testing, tethered testing, field testing, log analysis, iteration
• The path to production — BOM ownership, vendor sourcing, DGCA regulatory pathway, and design-for-manufacture as we scale

You will lead the drone side of this — but not alone. Our electronics engineers own the boards and firmware, and you will work with them daily on power, sensors, and payload integration.

What we’re actually looking for

We care far more about what you have built than how many years you have.

If you have personally taken a drone from a blank sheet to something that flies reliably — as a job, a startup, a university team, or in your own workshop — we want to talk to you.

Essential:

• You have designed and built a working drone from scratch — not assembled a kit, not flown a DJI. You chose the frame, sized the motors and props, wired the power system, integrated the flight controller, and got it airborne.
• You have tuned a flight controller yourself — PX4, ArduPilot, Betaflight or equivalent — and can explain what you changed and why
• You have diagnosed a real flight failure — a crash, a flyaway, an unexplained yaw drift — and traced it to a root cause
• You are comfortable with power system design: battery sizing, current draw under load, C-ratings, ESC selection, and why a drone browns out mid‑flight
• You can read a datasheet and a flight log with equal fluency

Strongly preferred:

• Payload integration experience — camera, LiDAR, sensor or delivery mechanism
• Experience with onboard compute for vision/AI (Jetson, Raspberry Pi, Coral, Hailo)
• Custom PCB work for drone subsystems — power distribution boards, ESC carriers, sensor breakouts
• Fixed-wing and multirotor exposure
• Any experience with DGCA regulations, drone certification, or flight permissions
• Long-range RF / telemetry link design

What we are not looking for:

• Drone pilots without design and build experience
• People who have only worked with off-the-shelf platforms
• People who prefer to work alone — this role is collaborative and hands‑on every day

Why this role is interesting

• Real product, real timeline. The delivery drone is funded and moving. Military and human‑carry platforms follow.
• You see the whole aircraft. Not one subsystem in a 40‑person org — you work across airframe, power, avionics and payload, with the people who own the adjacent pieces.
• A hardware team being built alongside you. We are hiring electronics engineers in parallel. You will have genuine collaborators, not handoffs over a wall.
• Direct access. You work with the founder daily. Decisions get made in the room, not in a steering committee.
• AI-native tooling. We use AI tools seriously across design and development, and we expect you to as well.