Autonomy Engineer for UAVs — Real-World Edge AI

The Construct; Boston (MA); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, and vision insurance

Equity for new hires

Flexible paid time off and companyholi

Job summary

Cleo Robotics is seeking a Robotics Autonomy Engineer to advance autonomy features for Dronut UAV platforms. You will develop and deploy AI-driven algorithms for navigation in GPS-denied environments using 3D LiDAR, IMU, and cameras to estimate pose and plan paths.

You will own the autonomy stack, collaborate across teams, and optimize performance on embedded edge hardware with ROS2, Linux, and modern tooling. A strong background in SLAM, sensor fusion, and real-time C++ is essential.

Qualifications

• 3–5 years of professional autonomy and navigation software experience on robots, UAVs, or autonomous vehicles.
• Proven field deployment of autonomy software on real robotic systems.
• Strong proficiency in C++ and C; Python proficiency required.
• Experience with visual odometry, VIO, 3D mapping, sensor fusion, SLAM, and EKF.
• Embedded Linux on SoCs like Snapdragon or Jetson; real-time profiling/optimization.
• Experience with ROS2, Linux, Git, Docker; telemetry and fleet maintenance is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own and advance autonomy stack across localization, mapping, state estimation, and path planning.
• Work across autonomy, perception, sensors, flight controls, and vehicle dynamics to solve system-level problems and optimize real-time performance.
• Develop SLAM, sensor fusion, calibration, relocalization, drift management, and map persistence.
• Develop perception and reactive autonomy for obstacle detection and safe navigation.
• Build autonomous behaviors including path following, mission execution, data collection, health monitoring, fault detection, redundancy, graceful degradation, recovery, and safe return behaviors.
• Take cutting-edge robotics research and turn it into reliable product capability on compute-constrained edge hardware.
• Optimize the full stack for onboard compute: profile and tune C/C++ for real-time performance within strict latency, memory, compute, power, and thermal budgets on embedded edge hardware.
• Build and improve simulation, log replay, automated testing, regression benchmarks, telemetry, CI/CD, deployment, and fleet diagnostics to support reliable autonomy across a growing fleet and multiple hardware configurations.
• Own real-world autonomy performance through bench and field testing, flight-log analysis, root-cause debugging, and rapid product iteration.
• Help define Cleo’s autonomy architecture and roadmap while operating with significant independence and ownership.

Skills

Visual odometry

VIO

3D mapping

Sensor fusion

SLAM

C/C++

Python

Embedded Linux

SoCs: Jetson/Snapdragon

ROS2

Telemetry & fleet diagnostics

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Robotics/CS/CE

Master’s degree in Robotics/Autonomous Systems/Controls/CS

Tools

ROS2

Linux

Git

Docker

Embedded Linux

Jetson/Snapdragon platforms

Job description

Cleo Robotics is seeking a Robotics Autonomy Engineer to advance autonomy features for Dronut UAV platforms. You will develop and deploy AI-driven algorithms for navigation in GPS-denied environments using 3D LiDAR, IMU, and cameras to estimate pose and plan paths.

You will own the autonomy stack, collaborate across teams, and optimize performance on embedded edge hardware with ROS2, Linux, and modern tooling. A strong background in SLAM, sensor fusion, and real-time C++ is essential.