Drone Engineer

Modern Intelligence; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 100,000 - 125,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Full medical for employee and family

Full dental and vision for employee

Generous PTO

Paid Holidays

Paid Parental Leave

Job summary

Modern Intelligence is seeking a Drone Engineer to maintain and integrate a diverse fleet of drones, spanning unmanned vessels to quadcopters. You will work on integrating autonomy software and solving issues across flight controllers and hardware in a fast-paced defense-oriented environment.

The role requires experience with fixed-wing and copter drones, and direct familiarity with ArduPilot or Betaflight, with relocation to Austin, Texas and travel as needed. U.S.

Qualifications

• Experience with both fixed wing and copter drones.
• Direct experience with ArduPilot or Betaflight.
• Willingness to relocate to Austin, Texas.
• Willingness to travel.
• Must be a U.S. person due to export-controlled technology.

Responsibilities

• Keep a highly heterogeneous fleet of drones up and running.
• Integrate and evaluate autonomy software on new platforms.
• Troubleshoot flight controller, electrical systems, or physical issues.

Skills

Drone experience

ArduPilot Betaflight

Willing to relocate to Austin

Willing to travel

Export-controlled familiarity

Education

Aerospace Eng / Mechanical Eng / Electrical Eng / Computer Eng / CS degree

Tools

CAD

3D printing

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 million 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 someone who loves building and flying drones. You will be working with many many drones from a wide variety of companies. You will be responsible for keeping a highly heterogeneous fleet of drones up and running, while also playing a key role in integrating and evaluating our autonomy software on new platforms. We expect you to solve any problem that comes up in the drone’s flight controller, the electrical systems, or any physical problem.

We are working with the job title of Drone Engineer, but we are open to using other titles that may be more suitable to the candidate: e.g. Aerospace Engineer (with appropriate background), Mechanical Engineer, Electrical Engineer, etc.

Requirements

• Experience with both fixed wing and copter style drones.
• Direct experience with ArduPilot or Betaflight.
• Willingness to relocate to Austin, Texas.
• Willingness to travel.
• 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 both ArduPilot and Betaflight, including ELRS/CRSF radio links.
• Experience with less common drone configurations such as tail sitters, VTOL, etc.
• Experience with UGVs and USVs.
• Has built their own drones.
• Experience with CAD and 3D printing.
• Degree in one of: Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering (or equivalent), or Computer Science.

Nice to have

• Experience with PX4.
• Experience with autonomy.
• Willingness to travel to Ukraine.

We are investing heavily in increasing our ability to fly, test, integrate with, and maintain drones from a wide array of different drone vendors. Although we have experience spread around our company, aside from a pilot, this is the first role we are hiring with this focus.

Strong candidates will have an opportunity to not only shape, but potentially own the team that owns all of our drones and drone development.

100000 - 125000 USD 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