Staff Engineer, AI Autonomy

Archer; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 195,000 - 235,000; Full time

Job summary

Archer is an aerospace company in San Jose, CA, seeking a Staff Engineer, AI Autonomy to lead building and deploying vision-language and VLA models for Archer's all-electric eVTOL aircraft. You will transform prototypes into edge-enabled components while collaborating with Safety and Simulation Engineers to ensure real-world performance.

You will push state-of-the-art in multimodal perception and navigation, balancing latency, power, and accuracy as you scale models from prototype to deployed

Qualifications

• 8+ years of related experience in ML/AI for autonomy.
• MS/PhD or equivalent in CS/Robotics; exceptional BS considered.
• Hands-on with vision-language or VLA models.
• Strong transformer/multimodal model knowledge.
• Proficient in PyTorch; experience with model-serving integration.
• Experience bringing models from prototype to deployed systems.
• Comfort with ambiguity and unscoped programs.

Responsibilities

• Develop and integrate multi-model systems including VLN/VLA, perception and language models.
• Design benchmarks and report comparisons against baselines.
• Fine-tune and adapt foundation models to new domains.
• Validate through data-driven testing in simulation, hardware, and flight tests.
• Deploy and monitor edge-run components under latency and power constraints.

Skills

8+ years of experience

MS or PhD

Vision-language models

Transformer architectures

PyTorch

Model serving end-to-end

0→1 product development

Ambiguity tolerance

Education

MS/PhD in CS or Robotics

Tools

Edge deployment platforms

Job description

Archer is an aerospace company based in San Jose, California building an all-electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft with a mission to advance the benefits of sustainable air mobility. We are designing, manufacturing, and operating an all-electric aircraft that can carry four passengers while producing minimal noise.

Our sights are set high and our problems are hard, and we believe that diversity in the workplace is what makes us smarter, drives better insights, and will ultimately lift us all to success. We are dedicated to cultivating an equitable and inclusive environment that embraces our differences, and supports and celebrates all of our team members.

As the Staff Engineer, AI Autonomy, you’ll be at the forefront of bringing intelligent, learned behavior to real aircraft — building and deploying the vision-language and VLA models that let Archer’s eVTOL aircraft, including Midnight, perceive, reason, and navigate in the real world.

What You’ll Do:

• Develop and integrate multi-model systems; VLN/VLA, perception, and language models.
• Design benchmarks, measure success and failure modes against internal baselines and published results, and report comparisons transparently.
• Fine-tune and adapt foundation models, weighing tradeoffs clearly at each step.
• Validate through data-driven testing in simulation, on hardware, and in flight test, partnering closely with the Safety and Simulation Engineers who check your model’s output.
• Take models from prototype to deployed, monitored components running on edge hardware under real latency and power constraints.

What You Need:

• 8+ years of experience related to position minimum
• M.S., PhD, or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Robotics, or a related field, with strong applied machine learning depth (exceptional BS candidates also considered).
• Hands‑on experience building, fine‑tuning, and/or integrating vision‑language or VLA models.
• Solid grasp of transformer architectures and multimodal foundation models, including the practical mechanics of fine‑tuning a pre‑trained checkpoint to a new domain.
• Strong with PyTorch (or comparable frameworks); comfortable owning model‑serving integration end to end.
• Real 0→1 experience — you’ve built the first version of something, not just iterated on a mature product.
• Comfort with ambiguity. If you need a fully scoped program before you can start, this won't be a fit.

Bonus Qualifications:

• VLN or embodied‑agent navigation experience (aerial, ground, or indoor robotics).
• Experience with reinforcement learning, imitation learning, or self‑supervised training for navigation or control.
• Edge deployment experience (NVIDIA Jetson-class or comparable) — measured and tuned inference latency and memory footprint.
• Shipped evaluation tooling or benchmarks that enable data‑driven decisions.
• Experience in or alongside a safety‑critical or regulated engineering process (aerospace, automotive, medical devices), even outside an ML‑specific role.

About The Team:

AI Products is a roughly 100‑person software org inside a company of aerospace engineers, and we expect to grow substantially over the next year. You get the resources and momentum of a real org, but the products themselves are early. If you want to hear more about what we’re building before you apply, you can’t. Apply, and we’ll tell you plenty.

At Archer we aim to attract, retain, and motivate talent that possess the skills and leadership necessary to grow our business. We drive a pay‑for‑performance culture and reward performance that supports the Company’s business strategy. For this position we are targeting a base pay between $195,00.00 - $235,000.00 . Actual compensation offered will be determined by factors such as job‑related knowledge, skills, and experience.

Archer is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusivity in the workplace. All aspects of employment are decided on the basis of merit, qualifications, and business needs. We do not discriminate based upon race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, gender identity or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

Archer is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to job applicants with physical or mental disabilities, and those with sincerely held religious beliefs. Applicants who may require reasonable accommodation for any part of the application or hiring process should provide their name and contact information to Archer’s People Team at [e-mail] . Reasonable accommodations will be determined on a case‑by‑case basis.

Information collected and processed as part of any job applications you choose to submit is subject to Archer's Candidate Privacy Policy .

Archer is unable to provide work visa sponsorship for this position at the present time.

Archer is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusivity in the workplace. All aspects of employment are decided on the basis of merit, qualifications, and business needs. We do not discriminate based upon race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, gender identity or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.