Drone Autonomy Engineer: Hands-on Flight & Systems

Ascend Engineer; Chicago, Northern (IL, KY); Hybrid; USD 110,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Ascend Engineer is seeking a Robotics & Autonomy Engineer to develop, integrate, and maintain autonomy capabilities on UAV platforms built around the PX4 and ArduPilot stacks. This full-time role emphasizes hands-on integration, debugging, and real-world flight validation across the entire UAV stack from embedded flight software to system integration.

The ideal candidate will have strong robotics fundamentals, experience with PX4/ArduPilot, and a drive to grow expertise in autonomous navigation

Qualifications

• Strong robotics and autonomy fundamentals including estimation and controls.
• Experience with embedded autopilot codebases.
• Experience with UAV or robotic platforms testing.

Responsibilities

• Develop and modify PX4 or ArduPilot firmware to support new autonomy features.
• Implement mission logic, flight behaviors, and MAVLink integrations.
• Integrate sensors, cameras, radios, and payloads into UAV platforms.
• Tune and analyze estimation and control performance (EKF/Kalman filtering, PID).
• Conduct flight testing and validate autonomous behaviors in real-world conditions.
• Analyze flight logs and telemetry to diagnose and resolve issues.
• Debug problems across the UAV stack including firmware, networking, hardware, and companion computers.
• Collaborate with engineers to design robust UAV architectures and workflows.
• Document system behavior, debugging results, and design decisions.

Skills

Coordinate frames

Kalman filtering

PID control

C/C++ programming

Autonomy fundamentals

Independent work

Tools

PX4 autopilot

ArduPilot autopilot

MAVLink

ROS/ROS2

Linux (embedded)

Job description

Ascend Engineer is seeking a Robotics & Autonomy Engineer to develop, integrate, and maintain autonomy capabilities on UAV platforms built around the PX4 and ArduPilot stacks. This full-time role emphasizes hands-on integration, debugging, and real-world flight validation across the entire UAV stack from embedded flight software to system integration.

The ideal candidate will have strong robotics fundamentals, experience with PX4/ArduPilot, and a drive to grow expertise in autonomous navigation