Senior Autonomy AI Engineer – Hybrid in Austin

NODA AI; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical Insurance

Dental Insurance

Vision Insurance

401(k) Matching

Equity

Unlimited PTO

Paid Holidays

Parental Leave

Military Leave

HSA

Job summary

NODA AI in Austin, TX is hiring a Senior Autonomy Engineer to design and implement the autonomy stack powering adaptive multi-vehicle orchestration across UAVs, USVs, and UUVs. You will work at the intersection of AI reasoning, event-driven stacks, and distributed multi-agent systems to ensure mission intent is reliably executed in real-world conditions.

The role focuses on mission planning, path generation, behavior execution, and task allocation, requiring strong robotics foundations, systems

Qualifications

• 6+ years experience developing autonomy or robotics systems.
• Proficiency in C++ and Python for real-time autonomy development.
• Strong hands-on experience with event-driven/pub-sub middleware (Zenoh, MQTT, DDS, or similar).
• Background in motion planning, navigation, and control systems.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement autonomy modules including path planning, task allocation, behavior trees, and reactive execution models
• Develop and maintain the autonomy framework that integrates with orchestration (AI-driven mission planning) and world modeling
• Ensure AI-generated plans are executable, explainable, and safe across multi-domain robotic platforms
• Implement and validate navigation, control, and autonomy behaviors for UAVs, USVs, and UUVs using event-driven middleware and simulation environments
• Profile and optimize autonomy performance for edge compute hardware (Jetson, Raspberry Pi-class devices)
• Conduct simulation-in-loop and hardware-in-loop testing to validate autonomy behaviors before live field deployment
• Contribute to safety, reliability, and compliance practices for autonomy in defense-relevant missions
• Collaborate across AI, networking, and systems engineering teams to ensure seamless orchestration of multi-vehicle operations

Skills

Autonomy & robotics

C++

Python

Event-driven middleware

Simulation & testing

Tools

Gazebo

Isaac Sim

AirSim

Zenoh

MQTT

DDS

Job description

NODA AI in Austin, TX is hiring a Senior Autonomy Engineer to design and implement the autonomy stack powering adaptive multi-vehicle orchestration across UAVs, USVs, and UUVs. You will work at the intersection of AI reasoning, event-driven stacks, and distributed multi-agent systems to ensure mission intent is reliably executed in real-world conditions.

The role focuses on mission planning, path generation, behavior execution, and task allocation, requiring strong robotics foundations, systems