Principal Technical Lead Software Engineer

About us

We are a well-funded, seed-stage stealth-mode company based in Torrance, CA, building modular intelligence and autonomous systems for a wide range of vehicles and applications.

About the role

We are seeking a Principal Technical Lead Software Engineer to serve as the technical architect and visionary for our unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) software stack. You will define the software architecture that enables our drones to navigate, map, and operate entirely without human intervention in complex, GPS-denied environments. As a team lead, you will balance hands-on, mission-critical development with technical and managerial leadership — mentoring engineers and setting long-term engineering standards.

Responsibilities

• Architect autonomous flight: define and evolve the high-level software architecture, including 3D perception, dynamic obstacle avoidance, and real-time motion planning
• Sensor fusion & perception: lead the design of robust sensor-fusion algorithms blending radar, LiDAR, thermal/optical cameras, and IMUs for localization in GPS-denied scenarios
• Edge & hardware co-design: partner with hardware and systems engineers to select edge-compute platforms (e.g., NVIDIA Jetson) and optimize code for size, weight, and power (SWaP) constraints
• Safety & regulatory compliance: oversee deterministic safety-fallback systems and automated HIL testing pipelines to meet aviation safety standards
• Technical leadership: serve as subject matter expert; establish coding standards, architectural blueprints, and strict safety-critical development processes
• Team lead: drive execution across the engineering software team while remaining an active IC

Required qualifications

• Must be a U.S. Citizen
• Work on location in Torrance, CA
• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with 4+ years leading technical architecture for autonomous UAVs or safety-critical robotics
• Flight testing: proven experience troubleshooting and validating software architectures through real-world field deployments and flight test ops
• Mentorship / leadership: demonstrated ability to mentor and lead engineers across cross-functional initiatives without formal managerial authority
• Minimum BS in EE, Computer Engineering, or related field

Required technical skills

• Expert modern C++ (C++17/20) and Python; shipped highly optimized, multi-threaded codebases
• Extensive ROS/ROS2 and open-source flight control stacks (PX4 Autopilot, ArduPilot)
• SLAM, visual-inertial odometry (VIO), advanced 3D path-planning (A*, RRT*, trajectory optimization)
• Embedded RTOS expertise in QNX, FreeRTOS, or Embedded Linux tuned for ultra-low latency
• Edge AI: deploying and optimizing lightweight deep learning models at the edge for real-time object detection and classification

Why join us

• Innovative and complex systems
• Hands-on engineering
• Collaborative and growth-oriented environment
• Competitive salary and benefits