Principal Autonomy Software Engineer

Join CHAOS Industries as a Principal Autonomy Software Engineer, where you'll lead the technical direction for our distributed defense systems. You'll be responsible for the autonomy software architecture, defining the technical strategy and roadmap, and building and productionizing autonomy software. You'll also mentor other engineers and translate operational needs into robust, testable autonomy requirements. This position offers generous pre-IPO stock options, relocation assistance, and a range of benefits.

• Set the technical direction for how platforms sense, reason, and act in contested environments, and take ownership of autonomy programs from prototype to fielded system.
• Own the autonomy software architecture end to end, including multi-sensor fusion, world-modeling, mission planning, task allocation, and real-time decision-making.
• Lead and mentor other engineers, raising the bar through design reviews, pairing, and hands-on collaboration, and drive alignment on hard trade-offs across teams.

• Comfort working with real-world sensor data (EO/IR, RADAR, RF, LiDAR, GPS/INS) and the messiness of live systems
• Must be a U.S. Person (citizen or lawful permanent resident)
• Strong foundation in the mathematics of autonomy: probabilistic estimation, sensor fusion, optimization, and/or planning algorithms
• Proven ability to lead technically in cross-functional collaborative environments setting direction, mentoring engineers, and driving cross-team decisions without formal authority
• A deep, hands-on track record designing and shipping autonomy or robotics software (perception, state estimation, planning, control, or multi-agent systems) that has run on real hardware in the field
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Aerospace/Mechanical/Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent work experience
• Expert-level proficiency in C++/RUST and Python, with strong command of software design for real-time, safety-critical, or resource-constrained systems
• Demonstrated ownership of complex systems from concept through deployment, you’ve previously architected something hard and been accountable for it in production
• Hands-on experience with robotics/autonomy frameworks and tooling (e.g., ROS/ROS2, real-time middleware, simulation environments, or other bespoke middleware)
• An active U.S. security clearance
• Experience deploying ML or autonomy stacks to embedded, GPU-accelerated, or edge-compute hardware
• Depth in multi-agent coordination, swarming, or distributed autonomy
• Experience in defense, aerospace, or another mission-critical domain with high reliability requirements
• Master’s or PhD in a relevant technical field