Autonomy Engineer for UAVs — SLAM & Real-Time Robotics

The Construct; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health insurance

Flexible PTO

Company holidays

Team gatherings

Fully stocked kitchen

Job summary

Cleo Robotics is seeking a Robotics Autonomy Engineer to advance autonomy features for the Dronut UAV platform. You will develop AI and autonomy algorithms, fuse sensors, and enable robust navigation in GPS‑denied environments.

You will work across localization, mapping, perception, and flight controls, profiling C/C++ for real‑time performance on embedded edge hardware, and contribute to simulation, testing, and deployment across a growing fleet.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Robotics, Computer Science, or related field.
• 3–5 years of professional autonomy software experience on robots, UAVs, or similar systems.
• Proven experience deploying autonomy software on real robotic systems.
• Strong hands‑on experience with visual odometry, VIO, 3D mapping, sensor fusion, and SLAM, including EKF‑based estimation.
• Experience with ROS2, Linux, Git, Docker; embedded Linux/SoCs 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 through changing environments.
• Build autonomous behaviors including path following, mission execution, data collection, health monitoring, fault detection, redundancy, graceful degradation, recovery, and safe return behaviors.
• Take cuttingdge robotics research and turn it into robust capabilities 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

Git

Docker

Embedded systems

Sensor fusion

SLAM

Education

Bachelor's in Robotics/CS

Master's in Robotics

Tools

PX4

ArduPilot

MAVLink

Gazebo

NVIDIA Jetson

Job description

Cleo Robotics is seeking a Robotics Autonomy Engineer to advance autonomy features for the Dronut UAV platform. You will develop AI and autonomy algorithms, fuse sensors, and enable robust navigation in GPS‑denied environments.

You will work across localization, mapping, perception, and flight controls, profiling C/C++ for real‑time performance on embedded edge hardware, and contribute to simulation, testing, and deployment across a growing fleet.