Sr. UTM Engineer

We are hiring a Senior UTM Engineer to build core components of DoorDash Air's internal route planning and airspace deconfliction stack. The role involves designing, building, and deploying interoperable services that must pass rigorous conformance and integration testing, developing novel path planning and airspace deconfliction algorithms, and building tools to evaluate and optimize airspace efficiency. The engineer will also design integrations connecting the deconfliction stack to existing DoorDash systems and collaborate closely with systems engineering, commercial operations, and flight operations. Additionally, the role includes representing DoorDash Air externally with peer companies, working groups, and standards bodies.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and deploy interoperable services that must pass rigorous, often open-source, conformance and integration testing against external systems and partners.
• Develop novel path planning and airspace deconfliction algorithms that find safe, efficient routes through real-world, dynamic environments.
• Build tools that help our teams and systems evaluate and optimize airspace efficiency and utilization.
• Design integrations that connect the deconfliction stack to existing DoorDash systems, translating mission and airspace status into terms internal stakeholders can act on.
• Collaborate closely with systems engineering, commercial operations, and flight operations to ship features that hold up in real-world flight.
• Represent DoorDash Air externally — engaging with peer companies, working groups, and standards bodies to improve interoperable deployments industry-wide and help shape the

Requirements

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
• You have 5+ years of experience across the full lifecycle — design, build, deployment, and operation — of distributed systems in aviation, finance, communications, healthcare, or another field where interoperability, uptime, and (ideally) safety criticality are core drivers of the work.
• You've built and shipped production services that had to interoperate with systems you didn't control, including passing external or open-source conformance/certification testing.
• You have hands-on experience with path planning, routing, or deconfliction problems in real-world, dynamic environments — or the algorithmic depth to pick this up quickly (graph search, optimization, or motion planning fundamentals).
• You're comfortable building evaluation and analysis tooling, not just the systems being evaluated — you like giving other teams visibility into system performance and efficiency.
• You can design clean integrations across organizational boundaries and translate technical system state into language that commercial, operations, and non-engineering stakeholders understand.
• You communicate well with non-technical stakeholders and are comfortable representing your work and your company outside of it — in standards working groups, industry forums, or direct collaboration with peers at other companies.
• You have strong software engineering fundamentals and experience with the languages and paradigms common to safety- and uptime-critical distributed systems (e.g., C++, Python, Go, or similar, plus familiarity with real-time or fault-tolerant system design).
• BS/MS/PhD in CS, EE, Aerospace, Robotics, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice to have

• Experience with airspace management, air traffic control, or UAS traffic management (UTM) concepts and systems.
• Experience contributing to or engaging with technical standards bodies or open-source interoperability efforts.
• Familiarity with certification-aware development processes (e.g., DO-178, ARP4761) common to safety-critical aerospace software.
• Experience with real-time or embedded systems, or with systems that must degrade gracefully under partial failure.

Benefits

• DoorDash cares about you and your overall well-being. That’s why we offer a comprehensive benefits package to all regular employees, which includes a 401(k) plan with employer matching, 16 weeks of paid parental leave, wellness benefits, commuter benefits match, paid time off and paid sick leave in compliance with applicable laws (e.g. Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act). DoorDash also offers medical, dental, and vision benefits, 11 paid holidays, disability and basic life insurance, family-forming assistance, and a mental health program, among others.
• For salaried roles: flexible paid time off/vacation, plus 80 hours of paid sick time per year.
• For hourly roles: vacation accrued at about 1 hour for every 25.97 hours worked (e.g. about 6.7 hours/month if working 40 hours/week; about 3.4 hours/month if working 20 hours/week), and paid sick time accrued at 1 hour for every 30 hours worked (e.g. about 5.8 hours/month if working 40 hours/week; about 2.9 hours/month if working 20 hours/week).