Autonomy Engineer Intern, Simulation & Robotics, 2027 (HQ) (Robotics)

Location: San Mateo, California, United States; onsite internship

Compensation: $47/hour for undergraduate students, $53/hour for master's students, and $70/hour for PhD students

Company

hirify.global develops autonomous drones and the computer vision, artificial intelligence, hardware, and software systems that enable autonomous flight for utility inspection, public safety, national security, and other applications.

What you will do

• Design, implement, and evolve the core architecture of the hirify.global Simulator across vehicle types, environments, and use cases.
• Develop physics and dynamics models for vehicle motion, environmental interactions, and dynamic agents.
• Build high-fidelity simulations of cameras, IMUs, and other onboard components, including timing, noise, and hardware behavior.
• Run and validate the autonomy stack in simulation and align simulated behavior with real-world systems in collaboration with autonomy, perception, and controls engineers.
• Develop simulator features for training scenarios, advanced testing modes, and customer and internal engineering workflows.
• Profile and optimize performance, debug interactions across physics, sensors, autonomy logic, and rendering, and contribute to documentation and technical direction.

Requirements

• Strong software engineering experience with C++ and Python.
• Experience building complex systems where performance, determinism, or correctness matter.
• Comfort reasoning about time-synchronized systems, state machines, or real-time execution.
• Ability to work in a large, evolving codebase with multiple stakeholders.
• Interest in robotics, simulation, or physical systems.

Nice to have

• Experience with robotics, simulation, game engines, or real-time systems.
• Experience with physics engines, sensor modeling, or hardware abstraction layers.
• Experience designing multithreaded or low-latency systems.
• Experience debugging systems spanning software and physical behavior.
• Prior robotics experience.

Culture & Benefits

• Multidisciplinary environment with collaboration across autonomy, perception, controls, and software engineering.
• Inclusive culture focused on diverse perspectives and solving complex problems.
• Full-time employees may enroll in benefit plans and access incentives and stipends.
• United States employment eligibility is verified through E-Verify.