Autonomy Engineer — Flight Robotics & AI

Knightwerx; Scottsdale (AZ); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation assistance

Travel opportunities

Collaborative engineering environment

Job summary

Knightwerx in Scottsdale, AZ seeks a software professional to advance autonomy systems for unmanned aircraft. You will design planning and decision-making components and integrate them with ROS 2 to enable reliable autonomous flight behavior.

You will work with autonomy, software, flight test, and systems engineering teams to deliver production-quality autonomy solutions for commercial and government platforms. Strong C++ skills and hands-on autonomous planning experience are essential.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in a related technical field or equivalent practical experience.
• 2-5 years of professional experience developing robotics, autonomy, or aerospace software systems.
• Recent hands-on experience building autonomous planning or decision-making algorithms.
• Strong C++ software development skills and experience writing production-level code.
• Experience working with ROS 2.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement motion planning and trajectory generation algorithms for autonomous aircraft.
• Develop autonomy capabilities supporting structured flight behaviors and mission-specific maneuvers.
• Build prediction models, intent inference frameworks, and behavior forecasting solutions for autonomous systems.
• Integrate planning and decision-making modules into a broader autonomy architecture and collaborate across engineering teams.
• Develop supporting infrastructure and production-quality software that enables reliable autonomy integration and testing.
• Contribute to flight demonstrations, system validation, and real-world autonomy performance improvements.

Skills

C++ development

ROS 2

Autonomy planning

Robotics software

Communication

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in a technical field

Tools

uXRCE

MAVLink

Job description

Knightwerx in Scottsdale, AZ seeks a software professional to advance autonomy systems for unmanned aircraft. You will design planning and decision-making components and integrate them with ROS 2 to enable reliable autonomous flight behavior.

You will work with autonomy, software, flight test, and systems engineering teams to deliver production-quality autonomy solutions for commercial and government platforms. Strong C++ skills and hands-on autonomous planning experience are essential.