Autonomous Flight Control & Autopilot Manager

Stark Defence; Germany (OH); On-site; USD 102,762 - 159,853; Full time

Job summary

STARK is a defence technology company focused on autonomous systems, designing, building, and deploying high‑performance platforms. You will own the flight control and navigation stack, developing the control and state‑estimation foundation that every other system depends on while growing a team of engineers.

This leadership role demands deep GNC experience, proven production deployments, and strong collaboration with hardware, perception, and systems teams.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software (robotics) engineering experience in the GNC domain.
• 3+ years in a leadership role with direct people management experience.
• Proven track record deploying robotics software into production.
• Fluent English; German is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a fast-expanding team of engineers working on flight control, guidance, and state estimation.
• Facilitate and execute the technical direction for the autopilot stack: control theory (PID/LQR/MPC), sensor fusion architecture, state estimation (EKF/UKF), and real-time performance.
• Partner with hardware, perception, and systems engineering teams to ensure navigation performance holds end-to-end.
• Own technical roadmap planning for your domain and represent it to your Director and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Bring software engineering best practices to the team such as the C4 architecture model, clean code principles and software design patterns.
• Moderate the peer review process with the team and ensure knowledge sharing across different seniorities.
• Drive hiring, mentoring, and career development for your team as well as ways of working together.
• Report on technical risk, schedule, and capacity to leadership.
• Drive test and validation strategy, from simulation and HIL testing through live trials.

Tools

PX4

ArduPilot

Job description

STARK is a defence technology company focused on autonomous systems, designing, building, and deploying high‑performance platforms. You will own the flight control and navigation stack, developing the control and state‑estimation foundation that every other system depends on while growing a team of engineers.

This leadership role demands deep GNC experience, proven production deployments, and strong collaboration with hardware, perception, and systems teams.