Manager of Engineering - Autonomous Pilot Integration (R5153) (AI)

Location: On-site in the United States: San Diego, California; Dallas, Texas; Washington, DC; or Boston, Massachusetts. Travel to test sites, customer locations, range exercises, and integration events is typically 20–30% of the year.

Company

hirify.global develops autonomy solutions for unmanned platforms across air, maritime, space, and expendable-effects domains for U.S. and international defense customers.

What you will do

• Lead a 3–8 person autonomy engineering team, owning delivery, performance, growth, leveling, and team rituals.
• Hire, interview, onboard, mentor, and develop engineers through complex technical work.
• Develop and integrate autonomy software for launched-effects platforms, including payload computers, autopilots, multi-agent coordination, and fleet-scale deployments.
• Set technical direction for feature crews or sub-programs, lead design reviews, and manage interface control documents and contracts.
• Coordinate with autonomy, perception, feature, autopilot, C2, customer, contractor, and government program teams.
• Prepare, validate, debug, and support mission-ready systems during laboratory work, simulations, flight tests, live exercises, and customer demonstrations.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, electrical, mechanical, aerospace engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• At least 7 years of related experience with a bachelor’s degree, 5 years with a master’s degree, or 4 years with a PhD.
• At least 2 years of direct people-management experience, including 1:1s, performance reviews, hiring, and growth planning.
• Experience with launched effects, loitering munitions, expendable autonomous systems, or comparable small unmanned platforms, including multi-agent or fleet-scale autonomy.
• Strong C++ proficiency for real-time or latency-sensitive systems, plus Linux, embedded systems, shell scripting, system diagnostics, middleware, pub-sub, or IPC frameworks.
• Ability to obtain a SECRET clearance.

Nice to have

• Platform-level experience with PX4, ArduPilot, QGroundControl, or Qt-based ground-control stations.
• Python, autonomy simulation, avionics bring-up, hardware-in-the-loop debugging, and container orchestration on embedded systems.
• Experience with air-gapped deployments, tactical edge C2, UCI, OMS, MOSA, WOSA, TAK, or CoT standards.
• Experience with CMake, Conan, CI/CD, and automation tools for testing, logging, and data analysis.
• Experience supporting defense customers, DoD stakeholders, international programs, or partner-facing technical relationships.

Culture & Benefits

• Work spans R&D, software integration, hardware validation, and field deployment of autonomous systems.
• Collaborate across multidisciplinary engineering teams, autopilot vendors, C2 providers, contractors, and defense customers.
• Support live mission operations, flight tests, range exercises, multi-agent events, and customer demonstrations.
• Operate in fast-paced Capability Release cycles with fleet-scale and disconnected-environment deployments.