Senior Autonomy Software Engineer

Develop the planning, coordination, decision-making, and degraded-communications behaviors that enable multiple unmanned aircraft to execute missions collaboratively.

Department Software

Location Annapolis, Maryland

Region United States

Job type Full-time

Work arrangement On-site

Base compensation $150,000–$210,000 per year

Eligible for an annual performance bonus based on team or department success.

ABOUT THE ROLE

Vanthal Technologies is seeking a Senior Autonomy Software Engineer to develop the planning, coordination, and decision-making software used by collaborative unmanned-aircraft systems.

This is a full-time, on-site position based at Vanthal’s operations in Annapolis, Maryland. The role works directly with aircraft, edge-compute hardware, flight-control systems, simulation environments, operator interfaces, and live test platforms.

The Senior Autonomy Software Engineer will develop software for mission decomposition, vehicle selection, task allocation, route generation, coverage planning, dynamic replanning, aircraft coordination, degraded-communications behavior, recovery logic, and human supervision.

This is a hands-on robotics-software role. The successful candidate must be capable of designing autonomy algorithms, implementing production-quality software, testing behavior in simulation, integrating it with physical aircraft, and evaluating performance during field testing.

This is not primarily a computer-vision, web-development, data-science, or research-only position. The role is responsible for translating autonomy concepts into reliable software that operates on real hardware under practical constraints.

Vanthal develops autonomy intended to operate within defined mission constraints and human-supervision requirements.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Design and implement autonomous mission-planning and execution software
• Develop mission decomposition and task-allocation logic
• Develop vehicle-selection logic based on aircraft capability, location, status, configuration, and availability
• Develop multi-aircraft coordination and collaborative mission behaviors
• Develop coverage-planning and route-generation algorithms
• Develop dynamic mission-replanning behavior
• Develop collision-avoidance and operational deconfliction logic
• Develop return, recovery, replacement, and relaunch decision logic
• Develop behavior for lost-link, intermittent-link, and degraded-network conditions
• Define human-supervision, approval, override, and abort interfaces
• Integrate autonomy software with aircraft telemetry and command interfaces
• Integrate software with simulation, software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, and live aircraft
• Develop reusable vehicle abstractions that support multiple aircraft configurations
• Implement health-aware mission behavior
• Incorporate aircraft state, battery condition, payload, communications status, and mission priority into autonomous decisions
• Develop deterministic startup, shutdown, recovery, and fault-handling behavior
• Create automated tests for autonomy decisions and mission-state transitions
• Build simulation scenarios for nominal, degraded, and failure conditions
• Analyze test results, flight logs, and autonomy-performance data
• Identify unsafe, unstable, or undesirable autonomous behavior
• Perform structured root-cause analysis for software and integration failures
• Improve autonomy reliability, predictability, and explainability
• Maintain clear architecture, interface, and software-design documentation
• Participate in code review and software-quality practices
• Support field testing, demonstrations, and aircraft-integration activity
• Work directly with embedded, perception, networking, mission-systems, flight-test, and aircraft personnel
• Contribute to technical planning and autonomy-system architecture

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• At least five years of professional software-engineering experience
• At least three years of experience developing software for robotics, autonomous systems, mission planning, industrial automation, real-time systems, or comparable physical systems
• Strong professional experience with modern C++
• Professional experience with Python
• Experience designing and implementing planning, decision-making, control, coordination, or state-management software
• Experience developing software that interacts with physical hardware
• Experience working in Linux-based development environments
• Experience with multithreaded, asynchronous, event-driven, or real-time software
• Experience creating automated software tests
• Experience debugging complex software and hardware-integration problems
• Experience analyzing logs, telemetry, and system behavior
• Experience with simulation-based development and testing
• Strong understanding of software architecture, interfaces, and modular system design
• Strong understanding of data structures, algorithms, and computational tradeoffs
• Ability to convert operational requirements into testable software behavior
• Ability to document assumptions, interfaces, state transitions, and failure behavior
• Ability to communicate technical decisions clearly
• Ability to work directly with hardware, aircraft, and test personnel
• Willingness to participate in hands-on integration and field testing
• Reliable attendance and professional follow-through

PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE REQUIREMENTS

Modern C++ is required. Python experience is required.

EDUCATION

A bachelor’s degree in computer science, robotics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, applied mathematics, or a related technical field is preferred. Directly relevant autonomy, robotics, and software-engineering experience may be considered in place of a degree.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Seven or more years of professional software-engineering experience
• Five or more years of robotics, autonomy, mission-planning, or real-time systems experience
• Experience with multi-agent systems or collaborative robotics
• Experience with decentralized task allocation or coordination
• Experience with coverage planning, route planning, graph search, or optimization
• Experience with behavior trees, hierarchical state machines, planners, or decision engines
• Experience with dynamic replanning under changing mission conditions
• Experience with collision avoidance or vehicle deconfliction
• Experience designing systems that operate under intermittent or degraded communications
• Experience with distributed robotic systems
• Experience with unmanned aircraft, ground robots, maritime robotics, or industrial autonomous systems
• Experience with ROS or ROS 2
• Experience with MAVLink
• Experience with ArduPilot or PX4
• Experience with software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop testing
• Experience with Gazebo, Isaac Sim, AirSim, JSBSim, or comparable simulation environments
• Experience integrating autonomy software with flight controllers
• Experience with edge-compute platforms and resource-constrained systems
• Experience with telemetry, command, and control interfaces
• Experience with geospatial data, coordinate systems, and map-based planning
• Experience with safety-critical, mission-critical, or high-reliability software
• Experience with formalized software-state and failure-mode analysis
• Experience building automated regression and scenario-test systems
• Experience developing software for GPS-degraded, communications-degraded, or uncertain environments
• Experience supporting live robotic-system testing
• Experience in a startup or rapidly developing hardware organization
• Military UAS, aviation, robotics, autonomy, or mission-systems experience

WORKING CONDITIONS

This position includes software development, laboratory integration, and field testing with physical unmanned-aircraft systems.

BENEFITS

• Three weeks of paid time off per year
• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• Paid maternity and paternity leave
• Eligibility for an annual performance bonus based on team or department success

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