Senior Autonomous Behavior Engineer (Robotics)

TL;DR

Senior Autonomous Behavior Engineer (Robotics): Designing and deploying autonomous swarm behaviors for real air, surface, undersea, and ground vehicles with an accent on algorithmic development, operator workflows, and field reliability. Focus on translating operational use cases into deployable C++ software, validating behaviors through simulation and live-flight testing, and improving the autonomy architecture for multi-agent missions.

Location: San Diego, California, United States. Must be a U.S. citizen and eligible to work on ITAR/EAR-controlled technology; visa sponsorship is not available. Travel of up to 25% may be required.

Salary: $120,000–$200,000 per year, plus annual equity and potential bonuses.

Company

hirify.global develops Apium Swarm Robotics autonomy software for dual-use commercial and defense vehicles operating in complex, safety-critical environments.

What you will do

• Design, implement, and field-validate autonomous behaviors for swarm platforms, from customer use cases through deployment.
• Translate operational requirements into autonomy primitives, behavior compositions, and arbitration logic.
• Define operator controls, workflows, naming, semantics, and API surfaces for ground stations and partner-integrated systems.
• Build and execute simulation, hardware-in-the-loop, and live-flight tests with quantitative pass/fail criteria.
• Extend the behavior library with documentation, tuning interfaces, regression coverage, and CI/CD test scenarios.
• Support field exercises and customer demonstrations while improving the core autonomy codebase.

Requirements

• U.S. citizenship is required.
• 7+ years of professional experience in robotics, autonomy, modeling and simulation, or a closely related technical field.
• Strong proficiency in C++ and experience implementing autonomous behaviors for air, ground, surface, or subsurface platforms.
• Strong linear algebra and vector math fundamentals, including coordinate transforms, plus working knowledge of optimization, control theory, and applied probability.
• Daily experience with simulation environments such as Gazebo, ROS, AirSim, SITL, or comparable tools.
• Strong technical communication and ability to collaborate with mission, UI/UX, firmware, hardware, QA, test, and field teams.

Nice to have

• Experience with multi-agent systems, swarm autonomy, distributed decision-making, behavior trees, finite state machines, or hierarchical task planning.
• Familiarity with TAK, CoT, MAVLink, PX4, ArduPilot, or comparable autonomy and command-and-control ecosystems.
• Experience with formal methods, scenario-based testing, automated autonomy test infrastructure, and field testing.
• Graduate degree in robotics, computer science, aerospace engineering, operations research, or a related field.
• U.S. security clearance or ability to obtain one; experience with reinforcement learning, Unity, Unreal, or custom simulation engines.

Culture & Benefits

• Work focuses on operationally deployed systems rather than research prototypes or demonstrations.
• Systems are tested in real vehicles and field conditions for customer missions.
• Compensation includes annual equity and potential bonuses.
• Work may involve indoor and outdoor facilities, PPE, industrial environments, and occasional off-hours or weekend support.
• Post-offer background check and E-Verify employment eligibility verification are required.