About the RoleAs the Autonomy Lead, you will architect, build, and lead the development of the full autonomy stack—ranging from perception-informed navigation to path planning and robust control algorithms. You will collaborate closely with our firmware, perception, and systems integration teams to deploy real-time autonomy solutions on actual flight hardware.

You will also play a key leadership role: mentoring engineers, driving roadmap decisions, and ensuring high performance and reliability in mission-critical environments.

Key Responsibilities

- Architecture & Development

- Design and implement core components of the autonomy stack: state estimation, motion planning, trajectory generation, and control.

- Drive the integration of perception, mapping, and localization systems into robust navigation algorithms.

- Own the autonomy system architecture, ensuring it meets real-time, safety, and performance constraints.

- Optimize for performance on embedded compute platforms (e.g., NVIDIA Jetson, PX4 Companion Computers).

- Leadership & Strategy

- Define the technical roadmap for the autonomy team in alignment with product and platform needs.

- Mentor and manage a team of autonomy, controls, and navigation engineers.

- Drive code quality, system reliability, and testing strategy, including simulation-in-the-loop (SITL) and real-world test flights.

- Represent the autonomy function in cross-functional meetings with firmware, perception, hardware, and product teams.

- Testing & Deployment





- Develop simulation environments for autonomy testing (e.g., Gazebo, AirSim, or custom frameworks).

- Validate algorithms through real-world flight testing and flight log analysis.

- Collaborate with systems integration engineers to tune algorithms on physical platforms under various flight conditions.

- Research & Innovation

- Stay current with state-of-the-art developments in robotics, drone autonomy, and reinforcement learning.

- Evaluate and integrate promising approaches from academia and industry (e.g., learning-based control, SLAM, agile path planning).

Requirements

Qualifications

- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Robotics, Aerospace, Computer Science, or a related field.

- 6+ years of experience in robotics, autonomous systems, or UAV software.

- Strong expertise in at least 2 of the following:
- SLAM / state estimation

- Motion planning (e.g., RRT*, A*, MPC)

- Control theory (PID, LQR, nonlinear control)

- Proficient in C++ and Python, with experience in ROS, PX4/Ardupilot integration, and real-time systems.

- Hands-on experience with robot simulators (e.g., Gazebo, AirSim, Isaac Sim) and flight test environments.

- Proven track record of deploying autonomy software on physical platforms.

Benefits

- Why Join Us
- Work at the forefront of autonomy, AI, and UAV innovation.

- Influence architecture and decisions from the ground up.

- Collaborate with a highly skilled multidisciplinary team.

- Competitive compensation and equity options.

📌 Lead - Autonomy (UAVs) (Bengaluru)
🏢 UNMANND
📍 Bengaluru