Autonomy Lead

The role

You will own the autonomy stack for Skyways' autonomous cargo aircraft, covering perception, state estimation, planning and flight behaviors. You will also lead and grow a team of autonomy engineers while staying hands-on in architecture, testing and flight debugging.

What you will do

• Own the end-to-end autonomy stack across perception, estimation, planning and system behavior
• Lead, manage and grow a team of autonomy engineers, including hiring, onboarding, performance and development
• Be accountable for your team's output, technical standards, morale and retention
• Define system architecture and make tradeoffs across reliability, performance and operational complexity
• Set technical direction for autonomy while remaining hands-on in critical technical areas
• Drive integration across autonomy, GNC, mission planning and aircraft systems
• Own how autonomy is validated across simulation, ground testing and flight operations
• Use flight data, telemetry and operational feedback to identify failures and improve performance
• Drive how datasets, evaluation pipelines and iteration loops improve deployed autonomy systems
• Debug real-world autonomy failures and close gaps between controlled testing and operational deployment

Required qualifications

• Experience building and deploying autonomy systems on real robotic or UAV platforms
• Experience leading and developing engineers, including direct people management or a clear track toward it
• Strong system-level understanding across perception, estimation and planning, with depth in at least one area
• Experience taking autonomy systems from development through operational deployment and iteration
• Strong proficiency in C++ and Python
• Experience debugging real-world autonomy failures using logs, telemetry and system-level analysis
• Experience working across software, hardware, and flight or field operations
• Ability to make practical engineering tradeoffs under real operational constraints
• Experience improving ML or perception systems using real-world operational data

Nice to have

• Experience with autonomous aircraft or aerial systems
• Background in robotics, computer vision or motion planning
• Experience with real-time or embedded systems
• Familiarity with ROS2 or similar robotics frameworks
• Experience deploying autonomy or ML systems to resource-constrained environments

Benefits

• Stock options, so you own part of what you build
• Medical, dental and vision coverage
• Paid time off and paid holidays
• 401k
• Life insurance
• Relocation assistance for candidates moving to Austin

Before you apply

• Limited to U.S. citizens, U.S. permanent residents, or candidates from specific countries authorized under applicable export control regulations, due to U.S. government contract requirements

About the company

Skyways designs, builds and operates fully autonomous long range cargo aircraft, founded in 2017 and based in Austin, Texas. Backed by Y Combinator and a $37M AFWERX STRATFI award from the U.S. Air Force, it runs revenue missions for commercial customers across three continents.