Autonomy Software Engineer - Drones & Field Deployments

Modern Intelligence; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 100,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Full Medical, dental, and vision for你u

Flexible PTO

Paid Holidays: All federal holidays +

Paid Parental Leave: 3 Months

Job summary

Modern Intelligence is seeking software engineers to bring Sovereign’s battlefield-tested tech from test ranges to real-world deployments. You’ll join a small, growing team, travel for field work, and help prove the product on Ukraine missions while building on C++20–style systems in Linux environments.

Ideal candidates have strong C++/C experience, Python skills, and a drive to defend democracy through autonomy software, with opportunities for cross-domain development and remote collaboration

Qualifications

• Proficient in C++, Rust, or C with solid memory management.
• Comfortable writing Python and Linux tooling.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in CS/CE/SE/Math.
• Willingness to travel for field deployments and integrations.
• U.S. person required due to export-controlled technology.

Responsibilities

• Support field deployments and integrations across platforms.
• Develop on Sovereign targeting software for unmanned vehicles.
• Collaborate with a small team to scale the product for battlefield use.

Skills

C++

Python

Linux

Travel readiness

US person

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/CE/SE/Math or equivalent

Tools

Bazel

CMake

Docker

GStreamer

ffmpeg

ONNX Runtime

TensorRT

CUDA

protobuf

gRPC

Jetson/ARM targets

TypeScript/React

PyTorch

Job description

Artificial intelligence is changing war - making decisions in combat quicker and more accurate, while enabling information to be shared more rapidly across both America’s and her adversaries’ militaries.Modern Intelligence builds Sovereign, the first defense-purpose foundation AI for unmanned systems, to be the standard battlefield AI on every Western unmanned system. Today, Sovereign allows drones as varied as unmanned vessels on water to backpack attack quadcopters to see, decide, and act even when jammed. We believe the responsibility of reliably and ethically building lethally autonomous AI is immense to our service members, the American people, and civilians everywhere.

Modern Intelligence has worked with partners across the Department of War including the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Special Operations Command (SOCOM), the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering, and countless unmanned systems hardware companies.

We have raised more than $22M in venture capital from Exponential, Oxford Funds, Bedrock, Vine Ventures, Contrary, Air Street, Caffeinated, Champion Hill, Swell, Myelin, and others.

Details

We are looking for a software engineer excited to take technology demonstrated on test ranges and relatively peaceful theaters and see it proven on the battlefield.

We have a small software team, but are looking to grow it rapidly. We are seeing significant increase in customer engagement and are looking to expand capacity on an established team. We need engineers willing to travel and support field deployments and integrations. And importantly, we want to take our product to and prove it in Ukraine.

Our product, Sovereign, is an Automated Target Recognition and Automated Terminal Guidance solution that works on any platform in any domain - we are currently working to expand its capability to meet any autonomy requirement for any unmanned system.

We are looking for engineers passionate about drones, autonomy, supporting our service men and women, and defending democracy and freedom around the world.

Requirements

• Proficiency in a compiled systems language: C++, Rust, or C. Our primary codebase is C++20; we do not expect you to know C++20 on day one, but we do expect you to already think in terms of memory, types, and build artifacts.
• Comfortable writing Python.
• Comfortable developing on Linux: command line, git, and code review.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Mathematics, or comparable, or equivalent demonstrated experience.
• Willingness to travel and support field deployments and integrations.
• Must be a U.S. person (U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or other protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)). This role works on export-controlled technology.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Bazel, or with CMake and an appetite for learning Bazel.
• Applied linear algebra: coordinate frames, covariance, Kalman filters, geodesy.
• Experience with Docker and containerized builds.
• Experience with video pipelines: GStreamer, ffmpeg, RTSP/RTP/etc.
• Experience with an inference runtime such as ONNX Runtime or TensorRT.
• Experience with CUDA or GPU programming.
• Experience with cross-compilation and embedded Linux, such as Jetson and ARM targets.
• Experience with protobuf and/or gRPC.
• Experience with TypeScript and React (our operator UI), or with PyTorch (our model training and export)

Nice to have

• Experience with Dart and Flutter.
• Experience targeting ML accelerators: Hailo, Qualcomm QNN, XNNPACK, ARM Compute Library.
• Experience building for Windows, macOS, or Android.
• Experience with MAVLink or other drone software.
• Experience with Slurm or other cluster training workflows.
• Prior defense industry experience, or an active or previously held clearance.

$100,000 - $120,000 a year

Compensation Specifics

• Final offer depends on demonstrated depth in a systems language and how much of the stack you can pick up quickly.
• Equity is granted on top of base for every full-time role.
  
  

Benefits

• Full medical for employee and family
• Full dental and vision for employee and partial coverage for your dependents.
• Generous and flexible PTO
• Paid Holidays: All federal holidays + last two weeks of the calendar year
• Paid Parental Leave: 12 weeks

People’s lives will depend on the code that you write here. If you want to do something that actually matters, let us know.