Software Engineer, Mission Autonomy

About the role

Join Mach Industries to develop the software that translates mission objectives into reliable autonomous behavior for our aerial platforms. This role involves designing and implementing capabilities for mission planning, decision-making, task execution, and contingency management. You will connect high-level mission intent with vehicle autonomy, flight software, perception, and ground control systems.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Design, implement, test, and deploy mission autonomy software using modern C++.
• Create Python tools for analysis, simulation, test automation, and mission evaluation.
• Develop software for mission planning, task sequencing, behavior orchestration, and state management.
• Build decision-making and contingency systems that respond to vehicle health, sensor availability, and environmental changes.
• Translate operational concepts and requirements into autonomous behaviors and software interfaces.
• Integrate mission software with flight controls, navigation, perception, and communication systems.
• Design clear interfaces between high-level mission logic and low-level vehicle capabilities.
• Develop systems that function effectively even with degraded communications, GNSS, or sensing.
• Support multi-vehicle mission execution and collaborative behaviors.
• Create simulation scenarios, software-in-the-loop, and hardware-in-the-loop tests.
• Define mission performance metrics and develop tools for evaluating mission completion and robustness.
• Analyze telemetry, logs, and flight data to improve system behavior.
• Collaborate with flight software, GNC, perception, and hardware teams.
• Participate in ground and flight testing, including debugging in field environments.
• Contribute to software architecture, code reviews, and technical documentation.

Requirements

• Strong software engineering skills in modern C++ and Python.
• Experience developing production software on Linux.
• Experience creating software for autonomous systems, robotics, or aerospace platforms.
• Hands-on experience implementing mission autonomy capabilities like task planning, behavior trees, or state machines.
• Strong understanding of software architecture, interfaces, concurrency, and system-level debugging.
• Ability to write clean, testable, maintainable, and well-documented software.
• Experience taking software from prototype through integration, testing, and deployment on real hardware.
• Ability to diagnose failures using logs, telemetry, and observed system behavior.
• Strong technical ownership and ability to work across engineering disciplines.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong engineering judgment in balancing mission effectiveness, safety, and reliability.

Nice to have

• 3+ years of professional experience developing software for autonomous vehicles, UAVs, or defense systems.
• Experience with autonomous aerial vehicles or optionally piloted aircraft.
• Experience designing mission planners, behavior trees, or executive systems.
• Experience with multi-agent systems, collaborative autonomy, or swarm coordination.
• Familiarity with guidance, navigation, controls, state estimation, or motion planning.
• Experience designing software for intermittent or bandwidth-constrained communication environments.
• Experience with fault detection, graceful degradation, and safety-critical state management.
• Experience deploying software on embedded Linux systems or resource-constrained platforms.
• Experience with simulation, software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, or automated mission evaluation.
• Experience building ground-control or human-machine interface software.
• Experience participating in flight testing, range operations, or field deployment.
• Experience with Rust for systems programming or safety-critical applications.

Skills & tools

• C++
• Python
• Linux

Practical notes

This position may require access to information protected under U.S. export control laws. Any offer of employment may be conditioned on authorization to receive controlled software or technology without sponsorship for an export license. Mach participates in E-Verify. Salary offers are based on experience, education, skills, and business considerations; competitive equity grants are included in most offers. Mach offers benefits such as health insurance and retirement plans.