Part-Time Drone Pilot / Flight Test Engineer (Santa Cruz / Monterey)

Tera AI; Santa Cruz (CA); On-site; USD 110,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Tera AI in Santa Cruz, CA, is seeking a high-velocity engineer to help build spatial AI for autonomous robots. You will leverage your drone piloting expertise, ArduPilot/PX4 experience, and strong coding skills to develop foundational AI systems and navigation capabilities.

Join a stealth, VC-backed startup with ambitious autonomy goals, and collaborate with experts from Google X and Unity to push the boundaries of spatial AI in real-world robotics applications.

Qualifications

• Experience flying custom built quadcopter, running ArduPilot.
• Experience building custom QuadCopters, FPV drones or similar RC vehicles.
• Piloting drone manually without GPS-assisted modes (altitude-hold, stabilize).
• Debugging ArduPilot and/or PX4 in the field.
• Part 107 Holder.

Responsibilities

• Stretch your imagination daily as we are building a new AI capable of making robots ubiquitous.
• Learn new skills daily alongside AI experts and product engineers.

Skills

ArduPilot

PX4

QuadCopters

FPV drones

Python

C++

Linux

Vision-based nav

Part 107 Holder

Tools

ArduPilot

PX4

Job description

We are a well capitalized stealth VC-backed startup building a new type of spatial AI capable of universally solving autonomy. We innovate at the foundational layer of AI by training our own AI models.

Our team

Our team is composed of AI pioneers and leaders from Google X, Google Brain, and Unity. Several of us are repeat founders, with deep commercialization insights across multiple enterprise segments. We enjoy long, deep ideations around entirely unexplored AI use cases in autonomy (cars, drones, robots).

Technical skills

• Experience flying custom built quadcopter, running ArduPilot.
• Experience, finding the right components and building custom QuadCopters, FPV drones or similar RC vehicles
• Experience piloting drone manually without GPS-assisted modes like altitude-hold and stabilize mode.
• Experience debugging ArduPilot and/or PX4 issues on the field
• Part 107 Holder
• Familiar with ardupilot's EKF-3 Estimation code.
• Knowledge of vision-based navigation systems
• Comfortable with Python, C++ and linux.

Who you are

• Learn it all: you have an innate curiosity for all things intellectual, and it’s something you can’t turn off. You obsess over finer details others miss.
• High intensity: you thrive in a high-stakes environment, and are driven by an innate obsession, not by others.
• Fast learner: you gravitate toward learning new things, and often find yourself learning more quickly than everyone around you.
• Driven by discomfort: you enjoy leaving your comfort zone and challenging yourself
• Creative: track record of solving hard problems with solutions worthy of academic papers
• Educator: you take pride in your ability to communicate complex topics clearly and have excellent speaking and writing skills.
• Zero ego: you don’t just take feedback, but truly see it as a gift. You don’t wait until feedback is given, but solicit it with every opportunity.
• Founder mentality: you roll up your sleeves to help solve the most pressing problem on a given day, even if it has nothing to do with this job post.

Location

• Based out of San Diego, CA
• Must be willing to travel

Day in the life

Expect to stretch your imagination daily as we are building a new AI capable of making robots ubiquitous. Expect to learn new skills every day, regardless of the level you’re currently at. We are a small team that supports each other. You will work closely with our AI experts but also product engineers.