Senior Staff Software Engineer, Autonomous Pilot Integration – Expeditionary (R5193)

What You'll Do:

Technical Strategy & Portfolio Leadership – Define and drive the long-term technical direction for Expeditionary autonomy across V-BAT, X-BAT, and future platforms. 

Develop & Field Autonomy – Guide development of mission autonomy, payload integration, flight-autonomy interfaces, executive autonomy, and multi-agent capabilities while ensuring successful operational deployment. 

Aircraft Team Partnership – Establish long-term technical strategy with the Aircraft team for platform integration, interface evolution, and mission readiness. 

Cross-Engineering Leadership – Influence architecture across the Autonomy Capabilities, Perception, GCS, Strategic Systems (ACP), Aircraft, and customer organizations. 

Subject Matter Expertise – Serve as the organization's technical expert for complex autonomy integration challenges spanning software, hardware, and operations. 

Design & Engineering Excellence – Lead architecture reviews, engineering standards, interface definitions, and organization-wide technical improvements. 

Mentorship & Organizational Growth – Mentor senior engineers, develop technical leaders, contribute to leveling frameworks, and partner on senior hiring. 

Mission Readiness & Operational Excellence – Guide customer releases, deployment strategy, and mission validation while supporting critical operational events. 

Continuous Improvement – Drive long-term improvements to engineering processes, integration workflows, testing infrastructure, and developer experience. 

C2 Interoperability & Open Systems – Define technical strategy for command-and-control interoperability and adoption of open-systems standards. 

Hiring & Developing Technical Talent – Define the technical hiring bar for senior engineering roles, partner with engineering managers on long-term staffing strategy, and help grow the organization's technical capabilities. 

Travel Requirement – Members of this team typically travel around 10–20% of the year to different office locations, customer sites, operator training events, flight tests, and integration exercises. 

Required Qualifications:

• BS/MS in a relevant engineering discipline or equivalent experience.  

• 10+ years of relevant experience.  

• Expert-level C++ and Linux systems development experience.  

• Demonstrated experience defining technical strategy across multiple engineering teams or programs.  

• Proven track record influencing architecture and solving highly complex systems integration challenges.  

• Experience mentoring senior engineers and driving engineering excellence.  

• Ability to obtain a SECRET clearance. 

Preferred Qualifications:

• Extensive experience with Group 3 UAS, VTOL platforms, or comparable autonomous systems.  

• Experience defining flight-autonomy interfaces or custom autopilot integrations.  

• Experience deploying autonomy to operational military systems.  

• Experience with international defense customers.  

• Experience with STANAG 4586, UCI, OMS, and open-systems architectures.  

• Experience shaping engineering practices across an organization.