Software Engineer, Autonomy

Swarm Aero; United States; On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Meaningful equity

Competitive base salary

Medical, dental, vision, 401k

PTO and paid sick leave

Monthly wellness stipend

Daily catered lunch (office)

Paid parental leave

Direct impact on national security

World-class engineering team

Job summary

Swarm Aero is redefining air power with the world’s largest drone swarm and a versatile swarm aircraft network. We seek a Software Engineer, Autonomy to own the autonomy architecture across all vehicles, defining perception, planning, and control onboard the swarm.

You will set technical direction, mentor engineers, and travel up to 25% for on-site tests. Join a fast-moving defense tech company offering meaningful equity, competitive base salary, and comprehensive benefits while contributing to

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Robotics or a related field.
• 5+ years building and deploying autonomy software at a major aerospace or autonomous vehicle program.
• Owned architecture for a shipped autonomous system, not just components.
• Deep expertise in at least one systems language (C/C++, Rust, or Go).
• Experience with frontier autonomy systems: vision-language-action models, world models, trajectory optimization, sensor fusion, and multi-agent coordination.

Responsibilities

• Architect a next-generation autonomy stack for onboard reasoning, adaptation, and swarm coordination.
• Define inter-robot and C2 communication protocols for tactical swarm decision making at the edge.
• Evaluate tradeoffs: onboard vs offboard compute, centralized vs distributed decision making, determinism vs adaptability.
• Mentor and guide a growing robotics engineering team.
• Write clean, maintainable code and set the standard for quality.
• Travel up to 25% for onsite test and integration events.

Skills

Autonomy software

C/C++

Rust

Go

Distributed systems

Education

Bachelor's Degree in CS/Robotics

Tools

ROS2

DDS/ROS2

ZeroMQ

gRPC

Protobuf

Job description

Swarm Aero is redefining air power, building the largest swarming UAV and the most versatile swarming aircraft network in the world. The company is moving quickly to launch the first aircraft designed specifically for swarming, as well as the Command & Control software to mobilize swarms of thousands of heterogeneous autonomous assets and empower human operators to achieve superhuman results.

The team has created and exited multiple startups, negotiated defense deals worth billions of dollars, and designed and built 30+ novel aircraft, with aerospace experience from Scaled Composites, Airbus, Archer Aviation, Blue Origin, and Boom Supersonic.

About The Role

We're looking for a Software Engineer, Autonomy to help define and own the autonomy architecture for the largest drone swarm in the world. This is a foundational technical role. You will set the architectural direction for the perception, planning, and control systems running onboard every vehicle in the swarm, and you will raise the bar for the autonomy engineers building around you.

What You'll Do

• Architect a next-generation autonomy stack that combines rigorous robotic foundations with cutting-edge agentic AI for onboard reasoning, adaptation, and swarm coordination.
• Define the inter-robot and C2 communication protocols required to enable tactical swarm decision making on the edge.
• Make and defend the hard technical tradeoffs: onboard vs. offboard compute, centralized vs. distributed decision making, determinism vs. adaptability.
• Mentor and technically guide a growing team of robotics engineers.
• Write clean, maintainable, and efficient code, and set the standard for what good looks like.
• Travel up to 25% of the time for onsite test and integration events.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Robotics, or related technical field.
• 5+ years building and deploying autonomy software at a major aerospace company or serious autonomous vehicle program.
• Track record of owning architecture for a shipped autonomous system, not just contributing components to one.
• Deep expertise in at least one systems language (C/C++, Rust, or Go).
• Proven experience deploying and validating frontier autonomy systems, including vision-language-action models, learned world models, trajectory optimization, sensor fusion, and multi-agent coordination.
• Excellent software engineering practices with emphasis on testable, reliable code.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with multi-agent or swarm systems.
• Experience with robotics middleware (DDS/ROS2, ZeroMQ, gRPC) and serialization formats (Protobuf).
• Familiarity with government UxS interoperability standards (OMS/UCI, STANAG 4586, FACE).
• Prior tech lead, staff engineer, or architect responsibility on an autonomy team.

What We Offer

• Meaningful equity in a high-growth defense technology company
• Competitive base salary commensurate with experience
• Medical, dental, vision, and 401k
• PTO and paid sick leave
• Monthly wellness stipend
• Daily catered lunch (office)
• Paid parental leave
• Direct impact on a critical national security mission
• A world-class team of engineers and operators solving genuinely hard problems