Mission Operator - UAV

Socket.dev; Paso Robles (CA); On-site; USD 85,000 - 155,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity stake

Premium medical, dental, vision plans

Relocation assistance

Unlimited AI tokens

Catered lunch daily

EV charging

Paid time off

Company holidays

Job summary

Scout AI is seeking a UAV Mission Operator to lead the drone side of our Mission Operations team, Swarm Forge—a mission commander directing a swarm of drones to search, identify, and strike with minimal human input.

You’ll lead the drone operator team, own the flight test pipeline, and run live customer demonstrations to ensure systems are prepared for both internal testing and external deployment.

Qualifications

• Hands-on UAS/drone operations experience
• 3+ years of experience operating, maintaining, or testing unmanned aerial systems (UAS) or similar platforms
• Demonstrated team leadership
• Comfortable working directly with engineers daily — triaging bugs and validating builds
• Able to co-own product development with a technical peer
• Experience running live demonstrations or training sessions for military or customer stakeholders
• Strong organizational skills to build schedules and readiness trackers

Responsibilities

• Lead and schedule the drone operator team day to day
• Partner with the Flight Test Engineer to drive product development and test priorities
• Own execution of Development Test Requests and flight test plans across the fleet
• Validate new software, model, and orchestrator releases in flight and catch regressions
• Plan and run customer- and investor-facing drone demonstrations
• Own customer training and support for Scout’s drone systems
• Track fleet readiness and maintenance across the UAS fleet
• Coordinate airspace deconfliction and hold safety line on every flight operation
• Provide feedback on flight behavior, hardware issues, and software bugs to engineering

Skills

UAS operations

Team leadership

Drone testing

Flight test coordination

Engineering feedback

Customer demonstrations

Safety procedures

Job description

The future of defense will be decided by those who field intelligent machines at scale. At Scout AI, we’re developing Fury, the first robotic foundation model for defense, to give U.S. forces overwhelming, adaptable, and autonomous power across every domain. Fury enables human operators to command fleets of robots through natural language, and empowers those machines to sense, decide, and act together as one. This mission will ask everything of us: urgency, precision, and relentless work.

The Role

We’re hiring a UAV Mission Operator to lead the drone side of our Mission Operations team, Swarm Forge: our AI mission commander, directing a swarm of smaller drones to search, identify, and strike with minimal human input.

You’ll lead the drone operator team, own the flight test pipeline, and run the live customer demonstrations to ensure systems are prepared for both internal testing and external deployment.

You’ll work in close partnership with our Flight Test Engineer: the Flight Test Engineer owns the technical depth of test design and instrumentation, and you own execution, the team, and everything customer-facing. Together you decide what gets tested, in what order, and what engineering hears back.

Responsibilities

• Lead and schedule the drone operator team day to day
• Partner with the Flight Test Engineer to drive product development on the air platform — shaping test priorities, splitting execution, and turning results into engineering asks
• Own execution of Development Test Requests and flight test plans across the Ax4, Archer, and Neros fleet, working directly with engineering on results and next steps
• Validate new software, model, and orchestrator releases in flight, and catch regressions before they reach a customer or a demo
• Plan and run customer- and investor-facing drone demonstrations, including live-fly events and vendor days
• Own customer training and support, including training Army and customer personnel on Scout’s drone systems
• Track fleet readiness and maintenance across the UAS fleet
• Coordinate airspace deconfliction and hold the safety line on every flight operation
• Feed structured feedback on flight behavior, hardware issues, and software bugs back to engineering daily

Qualifications

• Hands-on UAS/drone operations experience — piloting, mission planning, or direct oversight of drone operations
• 3+ years of experience operating, maintaining, or testing unmanned aerial systems (UAS), drones, or similar platforms
• Demonstrated team leadership, not just individual flying or engineering
• Comfortable working directly with engineers daily — triaging bugs, validating builds, giving feedback specific enough to act on
• Able to co‑own product development with a technical peer
• Experience running live demonstrations or training sessions for military or customer stakeholders
• Strong organizational skills — able to build a schedule, a readiness tracker, and a team rhythm where none exists yet
• Working knowledge of drone safety procedures, airspace coordination, and incident reporting
• Must be a U.S. Person due to required access to U.S. export controlled information or facilities
• Passion about defense of the United States and its allies
• May be expected to obtain and hold a U.S. Top Secret security clearance

Why Join Scout

• Work on the world’s most important frontier, ensuring U.S. and allied dominance in the age of intelligent machines
• Be a core part of a team building the first defense‑specific robotic foundation model
• Collaborate with some of the top engineers in autonomy, AI, and national security
• See your work deployed on real systems
• Help define the future of intelligent defense systems
• Backed by Draper Associates, Booz Allen Ventures, and other top investors

Benefits

• Competitive base salary and bonus
• Meaningful equity
• Premium medical, dental, and vision plans with $0 paycheck contribution
• Competitive PTO and company holiday calendar
• Unlimited AI tokens
• Catered lunch daily and fully stocked kitchen
• EV charging
• Relocation assistance (depending on role eligibility)

US Salary Range

$85,000 — $155,000 USD

The stated salary range below represents an estimated base pay only and reflects consideration of multiple compensation factors. Final salary offers may differ depending on factors including, but not limited to, relevant experience or training background, specialized skills, and business needs. Most full‑time positions also include highly competitive equity awards, which form part of Scout AI’s overall compensation package. In addition, Scout AI provides comprehensive, top‑tier benefits to full‑time employees.