Director of Engineering, Autonomy

Apply for the Director of Engineering, Autonomy role at BRINC Drones
. This role is open and we encourage early applications.

This range is provided by BRINC Drones. Your actual pay will be based on your skills and experience — talk with your recruiter to learn more.

$/yr - $/yr

At BRINC, we are redefining public safety with an innovative ecosystem of life‑saving tools. Our journey started with the development of drones and ruggedized throw phones, designed to access unsafe areas and establish communication to de‑escalate situations. Today, we've expanded into creating and deploying 911 response networks, where drones are dispatched to 911 calls to provide real‑time visual data, enhancing safety and enabling de‑escalation‑focused responses.

Our cutting‑edge solutions are utilized by over 600 public safety agencies across America and the company has raised over $150M from investors, including Index Ventures, Motorola Solutions, Sam Altmeyer, Dylan Field, Mike Volpe, Alexandr Wang and more. At BRINC, we are committed to recruiting the world's best talent to join us in our mission to support first responders in saving lives.

We are currently seeking skilled embedded software engineers to develop flight‑critical firmware, with a focus on advanced drone pilot assistance features.

We are seeking a hands‑on Director of Engineering, Autonomy to lead and directly contribute to the development of our next‑generation autonomy, navigation, perception, and control systems for UAVs and public safety products. You will own the technical direction, architecture, and execution of the autonomy stack while writing code, prototyping algorithms, conducting reviews, and working shoulder‑to‑shoulder with the engineering team. This role requires deep technical expertise and the ability to guide engineers through critical design decisions, building high‑reliability algorithms for localization, mapping, guidance, control, and intelligent mission behaviors.

You will lead by doing, delivering production‑grade autonomy on embedded robotic platforms, ensuring the system delivers for our customers in the real world.

• Lead the technical direction, architecture, and execution of the autonomy stack, including perception, navigation, controls, and mission logic.
• Contribute directly to algorithm design, implementation, prototyping, debugging, and optimization on embedded robotic platforms.
• Oversee planning and delivery of autonomy features and releases, ensuring high‑quality execution and alignment with product and mission needs.
• Work side‑by‑side with engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and hands‑on technical contributions.
• Mentor engineers and technical leads, promoting strong engineering fundamentals, autonomy domain expertise, and continuous improvement.
• Establish and uphold best practices in autonomy development, including coding standards, testing, simulation workflows, documentation, and validation processes.
• Build and refine simulation, HIL, and field‑testing pipelines to ensure reliability, robustness, and real‑world performance.
• Stay current with emerging autonomy technologies and evaluate their applicability to the product roadmap.
• Collaborate closely with software, embedded, hardware, product, and operations teams to integrate autonomy capabilities into complete UAV systems.
• Communicate technical risks, progress, and decisions to leadership and cross‑functional stakeholders.

• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, Aerospace, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
• 8–10+ years of experience developing autonomy, robotics, or real‑time software systems, with 3–5+ years in a technical leadership role.
• Proven track record of delivering complex autonomy or robotics systems end‑to‑end.
• Strong proficiency in C++ and Python, with experience writing and reviewing high‑quality, real‑time production code.
• Deep technical strength in at least one autonomy domain (e.g., SLAM/VIO, GNSS/INS fusion, planning/guidance, controls, etc.).
• Strong understanding of software development methodologies, testing practices, and tooling for…