Senior Autonomy Engineer - State Estimation Lead

Lunar Outpost•Golden, CO

About The Position

Are you passionate about shaping the future of humanity's presence in space? Lunar Outpost, a trailblazer in space robotics, invites you to join our team! Lunar Outpost is dedicated to creating a sustainable presence in space, while also driving positive impacts here on Earth. We are seeking a talented, experienced Senior Autonomy Engineer - State Estimation Lead. As the lead of our State Estimation Team, you will play a pivotal role in developing cutting-edge autonomous navigation and control systems for our lunar rovers. Working at the intersection of autonomy, robotics, and space exploration, you will be responsible for the architecture, development, and verification of the vehicle state estimation stack, including local state filters, global localization methods, and lunar surface state measurement solutions. This role provides technical leadership for a critical subsystem that underpins mobility, autonomy, safety, and mission operations. Collaborating with cross-disciplinary engineering teams, you'll bring your expertise to solve complex challenges and drive the innovation needed to explore new frontiers in space.

Requirements

Experience in research and development of perception and localization in unstructured environments
Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Robotic Engineering, or related field
A minimum of 5 years of relevant professional experience in developing state estimation systems for robotics, autonomous vehicles, aerospace, or similar domains
Demonstrated expertise with probabilistic state estimation techniques, including EKF, UKF, factor graphs, or smoothing-based methods
Experience with global localization or map-referenced estimation techniques, such as terrain matching, image-based localization, or absolute navigation methods
Strong foundation in estimation theory, uncertainty propagation, observability, and applied filtering
Expertise in programming languages such as C++, Python, and familiarity with ROS (Robot Operating System)
Experience leading technical direction or mentoring engineers on complex algorithmic systems
U.S. Person

Nice To Haves

Background in GPS-denied navigation, planetary robotics, or operation in GPS-denied environments
Experience integrating estimation with control systems, planners, or fault management frameworks
Experience with photoclinometry, or terrain relative navigation
Familiarity with simulation and validation tools for estimation performance analysis
Experience with long-duration autonomy, delayed updates, or intermittent absolute measurements
Graduate degree in robotics, aerospace, applied mathematics, or a related discipline
Demonstrated ability to work in multidisciplinary teams and communicate effectively across different engineering domains

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end state estimation architecture for robotic platforms, spanning local state propagation, global localization, outlier rejection, and external measurement integration
Lead the design, implementation, and validation of state filters, including extended Kalman filters, factor-graph optimization, and related probabilistic estimators
Develop and maintain both global and relative localization solutions
Fuse state measurements from onboard and external sources and infer dynamic constraints on state from sources such as terrain features, vehicle health signals
Define estimator interfaces, data products, timing requirements, and covariance conventions for downstream consumers, including planning, control, fault management, and mission operations
Establish estimator performance requirements, observability analyses, consistency checks, and failure detection strategies
Lead offline analysis and field validation of estimation performance across representative operational scenarios
Guide sensor fusion strategies in collaboration with sensor and systems engineering teams, including calibration, latency handling, and fault tolerance
Support anomaly investigation, estimator tuning, and root-cause analysis during integration and field operations
Conduct field tests and simulations to validate and refile algorithms and software systems
Ensure software systems adhere to industry standards for safety, reliability, and performance in space exploration contexts
Mentor junior engineers and promote a culture of technical excellence and innovation within the team
Stay at the forefront of autonomy and robotics technology, incorporating the latest advancements into our projects