Principal Engineer, Autonomy
About The Position
AeroVect is seeking a Principal Engineer for Autonomy, the senior-most individual contributor in their autonomy organization. This role involves deep hands-on technical ownership of Perception, Prediction, and/or Planning, with cross-stack influence across the entire autonomy system. The Principal Engineer will report directly to the VP of Engineering and will be responsible for setting technical direction for the autonomy team. The ideal candidate is strong at both the systems level and in execution, with the technical depth to make critical decisions and the drive to convert those decisions into functional code on a vehicle.
Requirements
- 15+ years of hands-on experience building production autonomy systems.
- Strong technical depth across multiple autonomy modules (localization, perception, prediction, planning, controls).
- Ability to think at the level of the entire autonomy system, not just a single module.
- Demonstrated track record of shipping autonomy components that have run in production on real vehicles at non-trivial scale.
- Prior experience as the most senior individual contributor in an autonomy organization, setting direction, mentoring engineers, and partnering with leadership without direct management.
- Deepest technical depth in perception, prediction, or planning (ideally more than one).
- Strong software engineering fundamentals in C++ and Python.
- Fluency with modern deep learning for autonomy, including practical aspects of training, evaluation, deployment, and lifecycle management.
- Experience working in or with ROS / ROS 2.
- Experience with the distributed-systems realities of on-vehicle compute (real-time constraints, IPC, fault containment).
- A strong bias for execution and shipping code.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with safety-critical or functional-safety-relevant systems (ISO 26262, ISO 13849, SOTIF, or aerospace equivalents).
- Experience operating in an Operational Design Domain involving significant human interaction, mixed traffic, or unstructured environments.
- Familiarity with simulation-driven verification and using simulation in a CI/CD pipeline for autonomy.
Responsibilities
- Own the design and evolution of the perception stack, including detection, classification, tracking, and multi-modal sensor fusion.
- Drive perception robustness across a wide range of real-world operating conditions and determine the optimal application of deep learning within the perception pipeline.
- Own the prediction stack, including the design of models for intent inference, behavior forecasting, and handling occlusions and edge cases.
- Set the direction for how prediction integrates with perception and planning.
- Own the design of the planning and decision-making stack, encompassing structured driving behaviors and domain-specific maneuvers for autonomous GSE operations.
- Determine where learned components can be integrated into the planner.
- Set the technical direction at the interfaces between primary areas of ownership and the rest of the autonomy stack.
- Partner with other senior engineers in autonomy to ensure system coherence end-to-end.
- Own the functional and SW architecture of the autonomy stack and collaborate with adjacent teams on its implementation.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
