Autonomy Systems Lead for Swarm Robotics

Swarm Aero; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity in a high-growth defense tech

Competitive base salary

Medical, dental, vision, 401k

PTO and paid sick leave

Wellness stipend

Office lunch included

Parental leave

Impact on national security mission

World-class engineering team

Job summary

Swarm Aero in the United States seeks a Software Engineer, Autonomy to own the stack for perception, planning, and control across every vehicle in the swarm. You will extend a platform-agnostic autonomy system and lead the engineering direction for onboard processing and edge communication.

This high-visibility role requires mentoring robotics engineers, delivering clean, reliable code, and navigating tradeoffs between onboard/offboard compute and centralized/distributed decisions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical field.
• 3+ years building soft-real-time embedded systems.
• Deep expertise in at least one systems language (Golang, Rust, or C/C++).
• Experience deploying and validating robotics algorithms (e.g., Dubins planning, SLAM, Kalman filters).
• Working knowledge of embedded systems (SPI/I2C/serial).
• Strong networking fundamentals (NAT, mDNS, UDP/TCP, multicast).
• Excellent software engineering practices with testable, reliable code.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve our autonomy stack, extending robotic foundations with agentic AI for onboard reasoning and swarm coordination.
• Harden inter-robot and C2 communication protocols for edge-enabled swarm decision making under degraded comms.
• Weigh onboard vs. offboard compute and centralized vs. distributed decision making for airborne scale.
• Translate test data into stack improvements and fielded operation.
• Mentor and guide a growing robotics engineering team.
• Write clean, maintainable, efficient code and set high standards.
• Travel up to 25% for onsite test and integration events.

Skills

Systems languages (Golang, Rust, or C/

Soft-real-time embedded development

Networking fundamentals

Testable software practices

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Tools

DDS/ROS2

ZeroMQ

gRPC

Protobuf

Job description

Swarm Aero in the United States seeks a Software Engineer, Autonomy to own the stack for perception, planning, and control across every vehicle in the swarm. You will extend a platform-agnostic autonomy system and lead the engineering direction for onboard processing and edge communication.

This high-visibility role requires mentoring robotics engineers, delivering clean, reliable code, and navigating tradeoffs between onboard/offboard compute and centralized/distributed decisions.