Autonomy Engineer for UAVs — Real-World Impact & Equity

Cleo Robotics; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Dental and vision insurance

Equity for new hires

Flexible paid time off

Job summary

Cleo Robotics is seeking a Robotics Autonomy Engineer to advance the Dronut UAV autonomy stack, encompassing localization, mapping, and perception. You will fuse sensor data from 3D LiDAR, IMU, and cameras to enable reliable navigation in GPS-denied environments.

You will implement VIO, SLAM, and path planning, optimize C++ on embedded hardware, and contribute to simulation, testing, and fleet diagnostics for a growing robotics platform.

Qualifications

• Bachelors degree in Robotics, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related field.
• Master's in Robotics, Autonomous Systems, Controls, or Computer Vision is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own and advance Cleo’s autonomy stack across localization, mapping, state estimation, sensor fusion, path planning, obstacle avoidance, and mission execution.
• Work across autonomy, perception, sensors, flight controls, and vehicle dynamics to solve system-level problems and optimize real-time performance.
• Develop and harden visual-inertial and LiDAR-based SLAM, multi-sensor fusion, sensor calibration, relocalization, drift management, and map persistence.
• Develop perception and reactive autonomy for obstacle detection, free-space understanding, dynamic replanning, 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

C++

Python

ROS2

Linux

Embedded systems

SLAM

Sensor fusion

VIO

Path planning

Kalman filter

Education

Bachelor's degree in Robotics/CS/CE

Master's degree in Robotics/Autonomous Systems (plus)

Tools

Git

Docker

CI/CD

Embedded Linux

Job description

Cleo Robotics is seeking a Robotics Autonomy Engineer to advance the Dronut UAV autonomy stack, encompassing localization, mapping, and perception. You will fuse sensor data from 3D LiDAR, IMU, and cameras to enable reliable navigation in GPS-denied environments.

You will implement VIO, SLAM, and path planning, optimize C++ on embedded hardware, and contribute to simulation, testing, and fleet diagnostics for a growing robotics platform.