Leads a small engineering team developing mission autonomy software for strategic decision-making, world modeling, predictive simulation, adaptive planning, and adversarial environments. Serves as a technical and customer-facing subject matter expert, leads proposals and programs, integrates edge-platform software, and advances R&D roadmaps. The role involves robotics algorithms, simulation-based validation, classical and machine-learning autonomy, behavior architectures, mission-log analysis, and occasional travel.
The Lead Autonomy Engineer is a key technical contributor and small engineering team lead on multiple programs aligned with division and/or group objectives. Mission autonomy is the ability for autonomous agents or teams to conduct strategic decision-making and coordinated actions toward longer-term operational objectives through persistent world modeling, predictive simulation, and adaptive planning under uncertainty and adversarial conditions.
Essential Functions
- Lead a team to develop innovative solutions to address technical challenges derived from customer requirements.
- Serve as a subject matter expert in emerging mission autonomy technologies.
- Support or lead marketing and proposal efforts in mission autonomy.
- Support or lead managing and tasking team to achieve program milestones.
- Take primary responsibility for prime and customer-facing interactions.
- Stay current with industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices in mission autonomy and other areas relevant to Scientific Systems.
- Collaborate with multi-disciplinary teams to advance R&D roadmaps.
- The role does require the ability to sit or stand at a desk and work on a computer for prolonged periods of time.
- This role may require occasional travel when necessary.
- May require the ability to push/pull/lift up to 15 pounds.
- Must be able to obtain and maintain a US DOD Security Clearance.
Requirements
Basic Qualifications:
- Bachelor of Science degree in Math, Statistics, Computer Science, Engineering, Physical Science, Operations Research, Data Science, or equivalent experience and 7+ years of progressive autonomy technologies experience including team leadership in a related industry, a Master degree and 5+ years of related engineering experience, or a Ph.D. degree and 2+ years working in a related engineering role.
- Experience working in a team leadership role in a related industry.
- Proven track record of leading proposals and winning contracts.
- Proven track record of leading programs in the principal investigator role or similar experience.
- Experience in building and integrating software for edge platforms.
- Experience with C/C++, Python, and/or project-specific required languages. (e.g. Java, Rust, etc.)
- Experience assisting with non-technical programmatic priorities as needed, including staff planning, budget estimation and tracking, and customer-facing interactions.
- Background in robotics technologies related to motion planning, behavior modeling, or decision-making and their accompanying algorithms.
- Experience with simulation tools and environments (e.g., AFSIM, NGTS) for validation, verification, and training.
Preferred Qualifications
- M.S. or Ph.D. degrees
- Familiar with AI/ML standard libraries and tools.
- Experience working in Linux-based development environments.
- Excellent organizational skills and attention to detail.
- Experience working on both classical autonomy and machine learning and the combination of the two, blending rule-based systems with learning-based methods such as reinforcement learning and generative methods to achieve resilient, adaptive behavior.
- Experience developing software modules that combine planning, decision-making, and behavior execution in dynamic, adversarial environments.
- Experience implementing and testing behavior architectures such as multi-agent collaboration, target engagement, payload management, reconnaissance, and engagement in adversarial scenarios.
- Ability to analyze mission logs to diagnose failures and optimize models for iterative development.
- Excellent oral and written communication skills including technical writing skills.
- Ability to identify and creatively solve complex problems
Benefits
- Salary: $150,000 - $196,000 (Depends on Experience)
- Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)
- Retirement Plan (401k, IRA)
- Life Insurance (Basic, Voluntary & AD&D)
- Paid Time Off (Vacation, Sick & Public Holidays)
- Family Leave (Maternity, Paternity)
- Short Term & Long Term Disability
- Training & Development
- Hybrid Work Schedule
- Free Food & Snacks
- Wellness Resources
- Summer 9/80 work schedule
Scientific Systems Company, Inc. Woburn, Massachusetts, USA Office
500 W Cummings Pk, Suite 3000, Woburn, MA, United States, 01801
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