Senior/Staff Autonomy Engineer

Job overview

The Senior/Staff Autonomy Engineer role is onsite in South San Francisco, CA; compensation is not specified, though the posting describes it as a competitive startup salary. The role supports development of solar-powered, long-endurance unmanned aircraft for low-latency communications in areas underserved by traditional networks. The engineer owns autonomy architecture and development across the vehicle, payload, and ground infrastructure, building the software and validation systems needed for a near-term flight demonstration. The work includes mission logic, planning, fault response, fleet coordination, simulation, and flight readiness.

What you'll do

• Own end-to-end autonomy architecture across vehicle, payload, and ground infrastructure
• develop mission management, state machines, behavior trees, and contingency logic
• build path and trajectory planning algorithms
• design fault detection and safe contingency behaviors
• develop fleet-management software and distributed simulation infrastructure
• optimize CI/CD pipelines
• drive software- and hardware-in-the-loop validation and flight readiness.

What we're looking for

Skills & competencies

senior/staff autonomy engineer

autonomy

aerospace

uav

flight software

mission planning

rust

c++

south san francisco ca

adastra

onsite

Work arrangement

• Weekend coverage required

Benefits & perks

• Ground-floor equity, health insurance, dog-friendly office, and competitive startup salary.

Why this role

Individual-contributor role with architectural ownership and no direct reports near term. Production C++ or Rust experience is sought; the stack is Rust, and strong C++ engineers willing to learn Rust are welcome. U.S. citizenship is not required.

About the employer

AdAstra is hiring for this role. Industry: Engineering Services. Sector: 54.