Senior UAS/GNC Engineer – Edge AI Autonomy

Scientific Applications & Research Associates (SARA), Inc.; Colorado Springs (CO); On-site; USD 125,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision insurance

Discretionary employee bonuses

401(k) match/profit sharing

ESOP

Job summary

Scientific Applications & Research Associates (SARA), Inc. in Colorado Springs seeks a Senior UAS/GNC Engineer to lead unmanned navigation and control development for DoD and DoE programs.

You will integrate flight controllers, sensors, and embedded AI on Jetson platforms. You will work across hardware, software, and AI teams, applying PX4/ArduPilot, MAVLink, ROS, and CUDA to deliver real-time perception, SLAM, and edge processing.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related field.
• 5+ years of hands‑on experience with flight controller integration and UAV software development.
• Experience with NVIDIA Jetson AI acceleration, DeepStream SDK, and CUDA programming.
• Knowledge of AI-driven perception, SLAM, and real-time processing on Jetson platforms.
• Strong proficiency in PX4, ArduPilot, MAVLink, ROS, C++, and Python.

Responsibilities

• Configure and integrate flight controllers (PX4, ArduPilot) with UAV platforms.
• Develop and optimize embedded software and sensor integration.
• Implement computer vision and AI-based perception for real-time tracking and SLAM.
• Utilize CUDA to optimize neural network inference on Jetson platforms.
• Collaborate across hardware, software, and AI teams on navigation capabilities.

Skills

Flight controller integration

UAV software development

C++ programming

Python programming

AI & edge computing

SLAM & perception

Autonomous navigation

ROS

Education

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree

Tools

PX4

ArduPilot

MAVLink

ROS

NVIDIA Jetson

CUDA

DeepStream

OpenCV

TensorFlow

PyTorch

GStreamer

Mission Planner

QGroundControl

Linux (Ubuntu)

Job description

Scientific Applications & Research Associates (SARA), Inc. in Colorado Springs seeks a Senior UAS/GNC Engineer to lead unmanned navigation and control development for DoD and DoE programs.

You will integrate flight controllers, sensors, and embedded AI on Jetson platforms. You will work across hardware, software, and AI teams, applying PX4/ArduPilot, MAVLink, ROS, and CUDA to deliver real-time perception, SLAM, and edge processing.