Staff Engineer – Autonomy & Motion Planning

About the role

This position on the Autonomy team in the UK will lead the delivery of autonomous behaviours into our products, acting as technical leads, senior individual contributors, and/or team leads who remain hands‑on. Candidates are expected to demonstrate end‑to‑end outcome ownership across the software lifecycle.

Key responsibilities

• Develop tactical autonomy software enabling unmanned platforms to execute complex missions across air, land, sea and space with minimal human supervision.
• Implement and test multi‑agent coordination, target engagement, reconnaissance and survivability behaviours in contested scenarios.
• Architect behaviours as scalable software subsystems that interact with sensor processing, state estimation, communications, actuation and payload interfaces.
• Collaborate with vehicle integration teams and operational subject‑matter experts to define interfacing requirements.
• Travel to co‑locate with end‑users or other teams up to 20% of the time.

Required profile

• BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, Aerospace, Electrical, Robotics, Mechanical Engineering or a related field.
• 7+ years of experience in software sub‑system scheduling, behaviour planning, motion planning, optimization or flight controls.
• Proven ability to lead multi‑disciplinary teams, set technical direction and manage full project lifecycles.
• Experience with collaborative development tools for version control, issue tracking, code review and release management.

Required skills

• Production‑level C++ development.
• Version‑control systems (e.g., Git).
• Issue‑tracking and code‑review tools.
• Release‑management processes.
• Robotics middleware such as ROS.
• Motion‑planning libraries (e.g., OMPL) and optimization solvers.

What we offer

• Opportunity to build defining defence technology for the century.
• Work at the forefront of AI, autonomy and next‑generation defence systems.
• Entrepreneurial, mission‑driven environment.
• Direct impact on international growth and strategic defence partnerships.
• Collaboration with exceptional teams solving complex operational challenges.