Embedded Software Engineer (Autonomy)

TL;DR

Embedded Software Engineer (Autonomy): Developing real-time trajectory generation and decision-making systems for a global autonomous drone delivery fleet with an accent on multi-agent planning and collision avoidance. Focus on optimizing safety, energy, and reliability in uncertain environments using MPC and convex optimization.

Location: South San Francisco, California, USA

Salary: $175,000 - $210,000

Company

The world’s largest autonomous logistics system, providing drone delivery of critical medical supplies and essential goods on four continents.

What you will do

• Build real-time trajectory generation and decision-making for autonomous flight using search-based, sampling, and MPC methods.
• Design collision avoidance and large-scale multi-agent planning for fleets scaling to 10,000+ flights per day.
• Optimize safety, energy, and reliability while managing vehicle and airspace constraints.
• Develop planning systems for uncertain environments, accounting for wind, turbulence, and partial observability.
• Extend autonomy stacks for new aircraft and define clean interfaces with perception and control systems.
• Validate performance through SIL/HIL, large-scale simulation, log replay, and real fleet data mining.

Requirements

• Master's degree in Computer Science or a related field.
• 3+ years of experience building software for safety-critical systems (aerospace, AV, robotics, or medical).
• Strong proficiency in Rust, C++, or C for real-time, fault-tolerant code on embedded Linux.
• Deep expertise in planning & search (A*, RRT*) and trajectory optimization/MPC shipped on real vehicles.
• Hands-on experience with simulation at scale, SIL/HIL, and metrics-driven validation.
• Proven ability to ship production-grade autonomy through ambiguous and noisy conditions.

Culture & Benefits

• High-leverage IC role with the ability to shape the flight stack and behavior of a global fleet.
• Equity compensation and discretionary annual or performance bonuses.
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• Paid time off.
• Opportunity to define the industry standard for safe, reliable autonomous flight.