Principal Autonomy Software Engineer

Responsibilities:

• Technical lead in autonomy, robotics, and machine learning software for the Advanced Capabilities Team
• Design, build, and integrate onboard and off-board airborne autonomy capabilities to:
• Reduce pilot workload and assist pilots with nominal and emergency flight procedures.
• Enable cargo aircraft to safely fly without a human pilot onboard.
• Support automated mission planning.
• Enable real-time contingency planning and safe execution of contingency procedures and maneuvers.
• Work closely with the R&D software engineering manager to understand team objectives, short term milestones, long term milestones, and technology roadmap.
• Contribute to concept of operations (CONOPs) design and requirements derivation for autonomy software systems.
• Lead architecture design and perform architecture and technology trade-off analysis, accounting for short term objectives and long term goals in decision making.
• Collaborate closely with the rest of the R&D software team throughout the research, design, implement, and test cycle.
• Drive, provide input on, and approve key decisions relating to system architecture and design, software implementation details, algorithm selection, tool/library usage, and more.
• Write, test, document and review code according to Merlin’s development standards as needed.
• Review design inputs and code written by the rest of the R&D software team.
• Act as a mentor for the team.
• Collaborate across Merlin to develop novel systems to solve the toughest problems in aviation and autonomy.

Qualifications:

• Degree in Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, Robotics Engineering, or a related subject.
• 10+ years of professional experience developing software for physical systems such as aircraft, robotics, or medical devices.
• Subject matter expert in at least one of these fields: perception, reasoning, decision making, planning, and control.
• Familiar with the following areas relating to the autonomy software stack:
• Perception: detection, processing, and tracking using cameras, radar, and/or LIDAR.
• Reasoning and decision making: state machines, behavior trees, hierarchical task networks, petri nets.
• Scheduling and motion planning: global and local spatio-temporal planners, preferably in the air domain.
• Human-machine interaction: use of algorithms and autonomy to reduce crew mental and physical workload.
• System reliability: monitoring of subsystems and identifying contingencies.
• State estimation and control.
• Robotics middleware software such as ROS/2.
• Ability to interpret, develop, and integrate abstract code to facilitate efficiency, modularity, and reusability.
• Years of experience providing tech leadership to a team of at least 5-7 engineers at different levels.
• Experience with Linux and open-source development tools.
• Proficiency in modern software development workflows and practices, including version control, pipelines, and unit testing, and peer review.
• Experience with overall product development cycle, including design, testing, and troubleshooting at the system level as well as at the software component level.
• Proficiency writing both Python and C++.
• Familiarity with simulation software, especially aircraft simulation.

Nice to Haves:

• Familiarity with ML frameworks such as Tensorflow, PyTorch, OpenCV.
• Experience developing sensor fusion algorithms.
• Experience implementing machine learning based perception and planning algorithms, including using deep learning and reinforcement learning techniques.
• Experience with hardware and software integration and debugging.
• Experience with flight testing (uncrewed or crewed aircraft).
• Awareness of aviation certification standards such as DO-178.
• Pilot license and flight experience is a plus.