R&D Engineer — Drone Systems

https://drone-port.in/; Chennai District; On-site; INR 900,000 - 1,200,000; Full time

Job summary

Drone Port in Chennai invites an engineer to bridge airframe and software, owning telemetry labs, protocol work with drone manufacturers, and cutting-edge diagnostic spikes. You will deliver rapid field diagnostics ahead of live stations and provide timely hypotheses for flight anomalies. Expect travel to Erode for validation in Oct/Nov.

The role emphasizes understanding flight controllers, telemetry protocols, and solid lab discipline, with real impact on mission-critical deployments.

Qualifications

• 3–5 years at the hardware–software boundary with serial protocols, radio links or flight controllers.
• Comfortable with a standard telemetry protocol.
• Understands what a flight controller is doing—IMU, barometer, compass and fusion.
• Three or more solo proofs of concept from nothing to a written finding.
• Lab discipline: documented, reproducible setups and honest negative results.
• Willing to travel to Erode for field validation in October and November.

Responsibilities

• Own the telemetry lab — bench, replay, visualisation and ground-truth data, live and reproducible.
• Own protocol work with the first drone manufacturer and evaluation of second/third-source adapters.
• Run new-technology spikes: correction services, edge inference, alternative power.
• Deliver field diagnostics into the war room a week before stations go live—diagnostic work must succeed under pressure.
• From November, provide flight anomaly data and a written hypothesis within four hours.
• Pin the decoder to a declared protocol version and fail loudly on an unknown message.

Skills

Telemetry protocols

Radio links

Flight controllers

Proofs of concept

Lab discipline

Tools

Data logging tools

Reproducible setups

Job description

The role

You stand at the boundary between airframe and software. When a pilot says the position fix was bad, you are the person who can say whether it was sky obstruction, multipath, or our code. From November there are no black-box failures on your watch.

Key responsibilities

• Own the telemetry lab — bench, replay, visualisation and ground-truth data, live and reproducible
• Own protocol work with the first drone manufacturer and the evaluation of second and third-source adapters
• Run new-technology spikes: correction services, edge inference, alternative power
• Deliver field diagnostics into the war room a week before stations go live — a diagnostic first used under pressure is one that does not work
• From November, give every flight anomaly data and a written hypothesis within four hours
• Pin the decoder to a declared protocol version and fail loudly on an unknown message rather than dropping it silently

Eligibility

• Three to five years at the hardware–software boundary: serial protocols, radio links or flight controllers
• Comfortable with a standard telemetry protocol
• You understand what a flight controller is doing — inertial measurement, barometer, compass, how they fuse and how they fail
• Three or more solo proofs of concept taken from nothing to a written finding
• Lab discipline: documented, reproducible setups and honest negative results
• Willing to travel to Erode for field validation in October and November

What you get

• A real lab, and spikes with a defined question and a stopping rule
• Findings written up honestly, including the ones that did not work