Autonomous Warfare Technical Director

Advanced Automation Corporation•Mountain View, CA

13d

About The Position

The Autonomous Warfare Technical Director is the portfolio’s senior technical leader for autonomous warfare hardware, software, and enabling technologies across air, ground, and maritime domains. The role ensures programs are technically credible, operationally relevant, scalable, interoperable, and capable of transitioning from prototype to scaled production and sustained use. This is not a research-only or advisory position. The Technical Director shapes portfolio strategy, evaluates technologies and architectures, helps establish engineering standards, identifies and mitigates technical risks and hazards, and works directly with Program Managers, operators, program offices, and commercial engineering teams. The employer strongly prefers candidates who have built, integrated, deployed, or scaled production-grade autonomous systems, rather than only laboratory prototypes or controlled demonstrations. The ideal candidate combines deep technical expertise, commercial product experience, systems thinking, and operational judgment. The Technical Director drives technical execution and shepherds portfolio programs, taking active ownership of engineering milestones, design reviews, and technical blocker resolution to support successful integration and delivery of autonomous warfare technologies. The role advises and oversees programs from problem definition and market assessment through testing, transition, and fielding; evaluates commercial systems and companies; assesses autonomy hardware and software stacks; and develops technical requirements, reference architectures, evaluation criteria, testing approaches, data strategies, and transition standards. The role ensures testing generates credible evidence of performance, robustness, reliability, safety, usability, interoperability, and mission effectiveness; distinguishes production-ready systems from demonstrations; engages commercial technical leaders to resolve engineering barriers; and mentors technical staff. This role is intended for a senior technical leader who can work across architecture reviews, test events, production lines, startup engineering discussions, operational units, and senior-leader briefings. Candidates should look beyond nominal performance to reliability, edge cases, integration complexity, operator burden, sustainment, cybersecurity, manufacturing, and continuous improvement. The position aims to help ensure autonomous systems delivered to the joint force are reliable, scalable, and operationally consequential.

Requirements

Deep expertise in autonomy, robotics, AI, or related fields.
Meaningful commercial or government experience developing and delivering autonomous or robotic products and capabilities.
Experience fielding production-grade systems that operate reliably outside controlled environments.
Strong technical judgment across perception, planning, control, communications, compute, data, platforms, and operators.
Experience defining requirements, designing tests, analyzing performance, and making evidence-based technical decisions.
Understanding of production engineering practices, including configuration management, CI/CD, reliability, quality assurance, cybersecurity, release processes, risk management, and sustainment.
Ability to communicate effectively with engineers, operators, executives, acquisition professionals, and senior government leaders.
U.S. citizenship and possession of, or eligibility for, a Top Secret clearance.
Willingness to travel approximately 30 percent.

Nice To Haves

Experience with unmanned systems, autonomous vehicles, industrial robotics, or other complex cyber-physical systems.
Previous experience as a CTO, chief engineer, engineering director, technical product leader, principal roboticist, or in a similar role.
Expertise in collaborative autonomy, multi-agent coordination, distributed systems, or human-machine teaming.
Deployment of autonomous systems in safety-critical, mission-critical, degraded, or communications-constrained environments.
Experience with simulation, synthetic data, hardware- or software-in-the-loop testing, and continuous verification.
Familiarity with modular open architectures, interoperability standards, data rights, and third-party integration.
Experience assessing manufacturing readiness, supplier quality, producibility, and scaling constraints.
Familiarity with DoD testing, safety, cybersecurity, certification, acquisition, or operational approval processes.

Responsibilities

Drive technical execution and shepherd portfolio programs, taking ownership of engineering milestones, design reviews, and technical blocker resolution.
Advise and oversee programs from problem definition and market assessment through testing, transition, and fielding.
Evaluate commercial systems and companies for technical maturity, reliability, differentiation, scalability, integration risk, and operational relevance.
Assess autonomy hardware and software stacks, including sensing, perception, localization, planning, control, communications, compute, data, safety, and human-machine interfaces.
Develop technical requirements, reference architectures, evaluation criteria, test approaches, data strategies, and transition standards.
Ensure testing produces credible evidence on performance, robustness, reliability, safety, usability, interoperability, and mission effectiveness.
Distinguish production-ready systems from demonstration-level capabilities by examining edge cases, failure modes, operator burden, sustainment, and deployment constraints.
Engage commercial technical leaders to challenge assumptions, resolve engineering barriers, and accelerate delivery.
Mentor technical staff and raise the portfolio’s overall technical rigor.
Shape portfolio strategy, evaluate technologies and architectures, help establish engineering standards, and identify and mitigate technical risks and hazards.
Work directly with Program Managers, operators, program offices, and commercial engineering teams.