Principal Autonomy Software Engineer (Robotics)

Location: El Segundo, California, United States. Primarily an office and lab environment, with travel as needed to test sites, field demonstrations, and other offices.

Base salary: $240,000–$310,000 per year, excluding bonus, equity, and benefits.

Company

hirify.global develops distributed defense systems powered by Coherent Distributed Networks for defense, commercial aviation, and border protection applications.

What you will do

• Own end-to-end autonomy software architecture, including multi-sensor fusion, world modeling, mission planning, task allocation, and real-time decision-making across distributed nodes.
• Define the autonomy technical strategy and roadmap, and drive alignment on complex trade-offs across hardware, RF/signals, systems, product, and engineering.
• Build and productionize autonomy software for resource-constrained edge hardware used in field environments.
• Set engineering standards for code quality, testing, simulation, and the safety and predictability of autonomous behavior.
• Translate operational needs from warfighters and operators into robust, testable requirements and lead capabilities from prototype through field deployment.
• Technically lead and mentor engineers while establishing simulation, testing, and evaluation pipelines for autonomous systems.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Aerospace, Mechanical, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Deep hands-on experience designing and shipping autonomy or robotics software running on real hardware in the field.
• Expert proficiency in C++, Rust, and Python, with strong software design skills for real-time, safety-critical, or resource-constrained systems.
• Strong foundation in probabilistic estimation, sensor fusion, optimization, and/or planning algorithms, plus experience with ROS/ROS2, real-time middleware, simulation environments, or bespoke middleware.
• Experience with real-world EO/IR, RADAR, RF, LiDAR, or GPS/INS sensor data and ownership of complex systems from concept through production deployment.
• Must be a U.S. Person: a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident.

Nice to have

• Master’s or PhD in a relevant technical field.
• Defense, aerospace, or other mission-critical experience with high reliability requirements.
• Experience with multi-agent coordination, swarming, distributed autonomy, or autonomy stacks on embedded, GPU-accelerated, or edge-compute hardware.
• Active U.S. security clearance.

Culture & Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision benefits fully paid by the company.
• 401(k) with a 50% company match up to 6% of pay, plus FSA, HSA, and life insurance.
• Unlimited PTO, free daily lunch, no-meeting Fridays, and a casual dress code.
• Competitive base salary, pre-IPO stock options, relocation assistance, and planned annual bonuses.
• Approximately 400 employees across five global offices.