Senior Staff Engineer, Software - Autonomous Aircraft Integration (AI)

Location: On-site in Washington, DC, Boston, MA, or San Diego, California, United States. Travel to test sites, customer locations, and flight integration events is typically 30–40% of the year.

Salary: $220,800–$331,200 per year, plus bonus, benefits, and equity for regular full-time employees.

Company

hirify.global is a venture-backed defense-tech company developing intelligent systems, including Hivemind autonomy software and unmanned aircraft.

What you will do

• Integrate autonomy software onto unmanned aircraft across onboard compute, sensors, and control interfaces.
• Build, configure, validate, and prepare flight-ready systems for mission operations.
• Support live flight tests with safety checks, system bring-up, troubleshooting, and mission-critical diagnostics.
• Capture and analyze flight data with autonomy, GNC, systems, and test teams.
• Develop automation tools and processes to improve integration timelines, test reliability, logging, and data analysis.
• Support system-level validation, certification, airworthiness, and defense compliance documentation.

Requirements

• BS/MS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Typically 10+ years of related experience with a bachelor's degree, 9+ years with a master's degree, or 7+ years with a PhD.
• Proficiency in C++ and Python, Linux-based development, shell scripting, embedded systems, RTOS, and system diagnostics.
• Knowledge of sensor integration, sensor fusion, and middleware frameworks such as ROS and DDS.
• Hands-on experience supporting flight demonstrations or live exercises, plus simulation and validation environments such as AFSIM or NGTS.
• Ability to obtain a SECRET clearance.

Nice to have

• Experience with unmanned aerial systems, flight-control systems, autonomy stacks, or GNC pipelines.
• Experience with electronics debugging, avionics bring-up, automated system testing, logging, and data parsing.
• Experience interfacing with DoD stakeholders and familiarity with UCI and OMS standards.

Culture & Benefits

• Hands-on work spanning hardware, software, and systems engineering in laboratory and field environments.
• Collaboration across autonomy, GNC, systems, and test disciplines.
• Regular full-time employees receive benefits and equity in addition to salary and bonus eligibility.
• Offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check.