Vehicle Autonomy Lead

The role

You will lead the team responsible for building, integrating, and fielding the on-vehicle autonomy stack for autonomous surface vessels. This role involves technical leadership, system design, code review, and supporting field tests.

What you will do

• Lead the technical execution of the on-vehicle autonomy team
• Own autonomy capabilities for autonomous surface vessels
• Define technical priorities, architecture, interfaces, and development standards
• Guide autonomy design decisions
• Lead, mentor, and support a team of autonomy, robotics, planning, and controls engineers
• Provide technical guidance through design, architecture, and code reviews
• Drive autonomy capabilities from concept through implementation and deployment
• Support vessel integration, field tests, and customer demonstrations
• Diagnose and resolve autonomy issues using logs, telemetry, and field observations
• Work cross-functionally with perception, mission software, embedded systems, hardware, and operations teams

Required qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Robotics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field
• 8+ years of experience in robotics, autonomy, autonomous vehicles, unmanned systems, maritime autonomy, aerospace, defense technology, or related technical fields
• Strong technical background in vehicle autonomy, motion planning, controls, robotics software, and autonomous system integration
• Proven experience leading engineers from a technical perspective
• Experience building and deploying autonomy software on real robotic or autonomous systems
• Strong understanding of autonomy software stacks
• Experience working in Linux-based development environments
• Strong programming skills in C++ and/or Python
• Ability to make sound technical tradeoffs
• Strong debugging skills across software, hardware, sensors, logs, telemetry, and field operations
• Excellent communication skills
• U.S. citizenship and ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance

Nice to have

• Experience with autonomous surface vessels, maritime autonomy, naval systems, unmanned boats, or maritime domain awareness
• Experience with collision avoidance, COLREGs-aware planning, path planning, trajectory generation, behavior planning, guidance, navigation, or control systems
• Experience with multi-agent autonomy, collaborative autonomy, distributed robotic systems, or coordinated vehicle behaviors
• Experience with ROS2, DDS, MOOS-IvP, autonomy middleware, or distributed robotics architectures
• Experience integrating perception, radar, EO/IR cameras, AIS, GPS/INS, or other maritime sensor modalities
• Experience with simulation, hardware-in-the-loop testing, autonomy verification and validation, and field test programs
• Experience supporting government, DoD, defense, or dual-use technology programs
• Experience operating in startup or fast-moving product engineering environments
• Active or prior security clearance

Benefits

• 100% Employer paid Health Insurance
• Dental and Vision Insurance for you and your families
• Life Insurance (Employer Paid)
• Ability to participate in the companies 401k program (Matching)
• Unlimited PTO policy with an enforced 2 week minimum
• Equity Package
• Work / Home Office Stipend
• Global Entry
• 16 Week Paid Parental Leave
• Monthly Health and Wellness Stipend

Before you apply

• U.S. citizenship and ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance

About the company

Havoc is a leader in all-domain collaborative autonomy. Its software-defined hardware approach powers military and commercial-grade autonomous systems across sea, air, and land.