Software Engineer, Autonomy (m/f/d)

Overview

As our Autonomy Software Engineer, you will own the architecture and delivery of the collaborative autonomy stack for multi-vehicle air systems, enabling teams of airborne platforms to coordinate sensing, allocate tasks dynamically, manage formations, and execute missions reliably under degraded communications and uncertain environments. You will define the technical roadmap for multi-agent autonomy, mentor engineers, and work closely with flight test, systems, and mission teams to translate advanced autonomy concepts into production-grade software that operates on real aircraft.

Responsibilities

• Design decentralized autonomy for multi-UAS teams including distributed task allocation, collaborative search and track, handover, and deconfliction under partial sensing or communications loss
• Integrate learning-based decision‑making including RL or IL with supervisory control logic and safety envelopes
• Develop perception‑to‑action autonomy pipelines from onboard sensing and state estimation through planning to actuation
• Own scalable multi‑agent simulation environments for autonomy training and evaluation
• Progress autonomy capabilities from simulation through HIL to on‑aircraft flight testing
• Define scenario suites, evaluation metrics, and autonomy performance benchmarks
• Establish verification strategies including edge case testing, disturbance modelling, and fault injection
• Contribute to autonomy validation and assurance artefacts suitable for aerospace programmes
• Set architecture direction for autonomy systems and conduct design and code reviews
• Mentor engineers and coordinate cross‑functionally with systems, mission, and flight test teams

Requirements

• Proven experience deploying autonomy on real vehicles preferably UAVs
• Hands‑on experience transitioning ML‑enabled decision‑making from research into operational software
• Strong experience in multi‑agent systems including decentralized control, distributed optimisation, or consensus algorithms
• Background in RL or IL including policy design, training and evaluation loops, reward shaping, or sim‑to‑real transfer
• Experience combining learning‑based methods with classical control or rule‑based safety mechanisms
• Strong software engineering fundamentals and experience designing maintainable autonomy components
• Experience building or deploying onboard autonomy stacks
• Ability to communicate technical architecture, milestones, and trade‑offs clearly in English

Preferred Qualifications/Experience

• Exposure to airworthiness or safety‑critical software practices including ML assurance or DO‑178C concepts
• Experience with multi‑agent simulation frameworks and scalable training pipelines
• Performance profiling on heterogeneous onboard compute
• Background in GN&C, estimation, or trajectory generation
• Familiarity with mixed‑domain operations involving air, ground, or maritime systems
• Experience in fast paced R&D or startup environments, with rapid prototype iteration times

About us

The mission of Cambridge Aerospace is to eliminate the risk of existential war in Europe. That risk comes from the air – low‑cost drones and cruise missiles now manufactured in colossal volumes by our adversaries, ballistic missiles capable of ending the world as we know it, and a new generation of hypersonic weapons that evade every existing defence.

We’re building low‑cost interceptors that defeat these threats, and the surveillance systems to detect and target them – at a cost taxpayers can afford, at the pace the threat demands, and with sovereign supply chains that assure delivery.

We have immense backing from the world’s best venture funds. We’re one of the fastest‑growing defence technology companies in history. And we’re hiring the best engineers to prosecute the mission.

If you are in the top 1%, willing to work harder than you ever have, build technology better than anyone else, and contribute to the defining challenge of our time, now is the time to join us.

Our Commitment to Inclusion

We’re committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace . If you’re excited about this role but don’t meet every requirement, we still encourage you to apply .