PX4 Drone engineer (Contract to full-time hire)

Avol is building novel autonomous electric blended-wing VTOL aircraft to deliver kidneys, blood, and other urgent medical specimens between hospitals. We’re looking for an individual to build the electronics for the next Avol drone for delivering blood. Your work will be pivotal in developing a new class of aircraft with higher volume, longer range, and more operating areas than any other aircraft today. This job will start as a short 3-month contract, and if (1) the milestones are completed in a timely manner and (2) we like working with each other, it will transition to full-time hire. You will be working with one of our other drone engineers.

About you:

• You deliver. You know that what matters is delivering quality work with high attention to detail.
• You are a problem-solver. If the first thing you do when faced with a new problem is ask for help, this is NOT the job for you.

What you can expect:

• Components are already sourced and assembled. Your primary job will be working with PX4 for waypointing and autonomous flight
• Your secondary tasks will include some CAD, manufacturing, and materials work.
• This is 100% in-person at our office in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Key qualifications:

• Proficiency with PX4 Autopilot, PX4 development, and QGroundControl
• A solid understanding of physics. You should be able to draw and analyze a free-body diagram, calculate moments, forces, and moments of inertia, and be able to clearly communicate your reasoning.
• Ability to both (1) spec and (2) assemble drone electronics package using off-the-shelf flight controllers, ESCs, PDBs, RX/TX/VTX antennae, GPS, gyros, and other basic components.

Things that can set you apart:

• You've built and flown a tailsitter H-wing before
• You've designed and built 3+ drones from scratch
• You can CAD extremely well on Solidworks. You can handle complex surfacing, lofted extrusions, and shells. Show us the most complex thing you’ve done on CAD.
• You have a solid, intuitive grasp on the differences between various types of aluminums, composites, steels, and plastics

Compensation:

• Health insurance and dental included for full-time hire
• $6,000 to $9,000 per month.