State Estimation & Navigation Lead (Drones)

Location: Torrance, California, United States

Salary: $191,500–$268,000 USD per year

Company

hirify.global is a defense technology company designing and manufacturing high-performance unmanned systems for modern battlefield applications.

What you will do

• Own the technical roadmap for onboard vehicle-state and target-state estimation, navigation, and calibrated uncertainty interfaces.
• Architect, implement, and field GPS-denied and GPS-degraded navigation by fusing IMU, vision, GNSS, and other onboard sensors on embedded compute.
• Lead visual-inertial and terrain-relative navigation from prototype through deployment across multiple aircraft.
• Define estimation-uncertainty and autonomy-reliability standards using simulation, dataset replay, hardware-in-the-loop, and flight testing.
• Hire, manage, and mentor state-estimation and navigation engineers while contributing hands-on code and design reviews.
• Partner with perception, guidance and control, platform software, and hardware teams on sensing, compute, latency, calibration, and field deployment.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional experience in state estimation, navigation, sensor fusion, or GNC for robotics, aerospace, autonomous vehicles, or defense systems, including management or technical leadership experience.
• Experience taking a state-estimation or navigation system from architecture through deployment on production hardware.
• Deep knowledge of EKF, UKF, error-state or invariant filters, factor graphs, sliding-window smoothing, and observability analysis.
• Hands-on experience fusing IMU, camera, GNSS, and range or altimetry data, including calibration, time synchronization, latency compensation, bias modeling, and outlier rejection.
• Strong C++ and Python skills, with experience implementing real-time algorithms under embedded compute, memory, and latency constraints.
• Experience with quantitative validation, field debugging, regression testing, and foundations in linear algebra, probability, and numerical optimization.

Nice to have

• Experience delivering visual-inertial odometry or terrain-relative navigation as a fielded capability.
• Experience with target-state estimation or tracking through clutter and occlusion.
• Experience with PX4, ArduPilot, Betaflight, or custom flight-control systems.
• Experience defining cross-team evaluation standards or scaling autonomy stacks across multiple vehicle platforms.
• Experience in a high-tempo startup or with ITAR/EAR-constrained programs.

Culture & Benefits

• Fast-paced, hands-on environment focused on moving capabilities from design to deployment.
• Work on unmanned systems tested in combat and produced at scale.
• Highly competitive equity grants are included in the total compensation package.
• Equal opportunity employment is provided without regard to protected characteristics.