Senior Software Engineer, UAV and Autonomous Systems (Founding Team)

UAS start-up | South Midlands (Oxford-Cambridge corridor) | Full-time, fully on-site
£50,000-£70,000 plus equity

About us

We are an early-stage UK company developing a small unmanned aircraft system for security and public-safety users. It is designed and engineered in the UK, with a focus on sovereign supply and operational usefulness.

We are building a small, hands-on engineering team. You will work directly with the company's leadership and a specialist AI partner, and your software will run on real aircraft.

The role
You will lead the aircraft and ground-station software: flight-stack integration, communications, payload control, and the operator-facing ground control software where much of the product's capability lives.

What you will do
Integrate and configure an open-source autopilot on custom flight-control hardware.
Develop the communications between the aircraft and the ground station, including telemetry and command and control.
Integrate camera payloads, from video pipeline to camera control.
Develop ground control software, including integrating detection and tracking capability supplied by a specialist partner.
Build logging, diagnostics and telemetry tools.
Set up simulation, bench testing and flight-test support.
Establish version control, CI, release management and documentation for firmware and ground software.
Work closely with the hardware lead during integration, and support customer demonstrations and evaluations.

What we are looking for :
Essential :

Hands-on experience programming or building UAVs, robots or autonomous vehicles, commercially, academically or personally.
Strong C/C++ and Python.
Experience with an open-source autopilot (ArduPilot or PX4) and MAVLink.
Understanding of GNSS, IMUs and UAV navigation.
Linux-based embedded systems experience.
Working understanding of open-source licensing, including GPL.
Desirable
Autopilot simulation (SITL/HITL).
Video streaming and camera integration.
Computer vision or ML deployment on edge hardware.
ROS/ROS2.
Secure communications.
ATAK/TAK integration.
Defence or public-safety systems.

The person :

You are hooked on drones, robotics or autonomy, and you have built things outside of coursework. You are happy moving between code, bench and field in the same week, and working side by side with hardware engineers.
Defence-sector experience is not required. Technical ability, curiosity and pace count for more.
Eligibility
Applicants must be British citizens and be able to obtain security clearance [level TBD]. Because of the nature of the work, we are unable to offer visa sponsorship.
What we offer
Equity participation.
[Pension and holiday allowance - to confirm].
A path to lead a growing software and autonomy team.
How to apply
Contact [email protected]. Further details are shared with shortlisted candidates under a confidentiality agreement.
We welcome applications from everyone, regardless of background, and make reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process.