Staff Software Engineer (Autonomy)

Location: San Mateo, California, United States; on-site. Travel to office locations, customer sites, and flight integration events is typically 10–15% of the year.

Company

hirify.global develops autonomy capabilities for unmanned platforms operating across air, land, sea, and space domains.

What you will do

• Design tactical autonomy algorithms for unmanned aircraft and multi-agent missions.
• Develop high-performance C++ modules for planning, decision-making, and behavior execution in dynamic and adversarial environments.
• Implement and test behavior architectures supporting coordination, target engagement, reconnaissance, and survivability.
• Integrate classical autonomy with machine learning and reinforcement learning methods.
• Collaborate with perception, planning, simulation, hardware, and flight-test teams to deploy capabilities on real platforms.
• Analyze mission data, support field tests and flight demonstrations, and contribute to autonomy research and roadmap planning.

Requirements

• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field.
• Proficiency in production-level C++ software development.
• 7+ years of experience in software integration, behavior planning, task and resource allocation, motion planning, optimization, or flight controls.
• Experience with version control, issue tracking, code reviews, and release management.
• Ability to lead multidisciplinary teams, set technical direction, and own software systems through requirements, design, implementation, deployment, and sustainment.
• Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Secret security clearance.

Nice to have

• Experience with mission systems integration, flight demonstrations, and transitioning research-grade concepts to operational systems.
• Knowledge of collaborative mission planning, synchronized teaming, motion planning, target assignment, collision avoidance, geofencing, and safety monitoring.
• Experience with robotic systems software such as ROS, OMPL, and optimization solvers.
• Experience with simulation environments such as AFSIM and NGTS.
• Familiarity with navigation, communications, systems engineering, and high-assurance software processes such as DO-178C or equivalent MIL-STD standards.

Culture & Benefits

• Work in a collaborative, fast-paced, mission-centric environment.
• Collaborate across autonomy, perception, planning, simulation, hardware, and flight-test disciplines.
• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to team cohesion and technical growth.
• Support defense-focused programs and operationally relevant customer missions.