This role leads the engineering team building computer vision, sensor fusion, targeting, and control systems for autonomous systems operating on constrained edge hardware in dynamic, contested environments. The Software and Autonomy Engineering Lead will set technical direction and architecture standards across firmware and software, mentor and grow the team, and personally develop perception and autonomy systems from prototyping through field deployment.

Responsibilities

Set technical direction and architecture standards spanning firmware and autonomy software
Lead, mentor, and help grow a small team of firmware and software engineers
Own build vs. buy and make vs. partner decisions for perception and autonomy components
Partner with hardware and program management on system-level tradeoffs
Develop and deploy real-time object detection, classification, and tracking systems for small, fast-moving aerial and ground targets
Optimize models for edge deployment in constrained environments
Build multi-sensor perception pipelines that enable sensor fusion
Build robustness for real-world conditions
Integrate perception outputs into downstream tracking and effector control systems
Oversee firmware architecture for sensor drivers, real-time OS scheduling, and hardware controls
Ensure clean interfaces between firmware, perception, and targeting layers
Support field testing, integration, and troubleshooting across the full stack

Requirements

Experience leading or mentoring a software/firmware engineering team
Experience with modern computer vision models and training/fine-tuning/deployment
Proven track record of edge model optimization
Experience with lead-angle calculation for computing aimpoint solutions from tracked target kinematics
Experience building human-in-the-loop control interfaces or state machines that facilitate automated tracking and operator authorization
Embedded/firmware experience: real-time OS, sensor drivers, and hardware management
Experience with real-time video pipelines and multi-sensor fusion
Experience with Hailo or similar edge AI accelerators
Python, C++ &/OR Rust skills

Nice to have

Experience in kill chain methodologies, edge perception and classification for specific target sets, and an understanding of the trade-offs for different sensing modalities and wavelengths
Experience with hardware control loop algorithms for tracking and targeting
Experience with multi-object tracking and target fusion and arbitration
Prior experience in defense, counter-UAS, or small-UAS autonomy systems
Experience developing and/or working in .cu files