Software Engineer, Autonomous Systems

Software Engineer, Autonomous Systems Company: Saildrone Location: Alameda, CA (hybrid, 3 days per week in office) Compensation: $210,000 - $300,000 + equity Employment Type: Full-time Visa Sponsorship: Confirm with recruiter (defense work) About Saildrone Saildrone is a maritime defense company whose autonomous vessels deliver persistent, wide-area intelligence in the world's harshest environments, harnessing AI, advanced sensor suites and renewable power. Founded in 2014, Saildrone has raised $300M; its Alameda waterfront HQ has direct access to the lagoon where vessels are launched and tested. The Role Saildrone is hiring a Software Engineer (5+ years) in autonomous systems or robotics with strong C++ and hands-on experience shipping autonomy software on real vehicles, across perception, localization, planning, decision-making and vehicle behavior. What You Will Do Design, implement and deploy production autonomy software in C++ onboard autonomous maritime vehicles. Develop algorithms for perception, localization, planning, navigation and collision/terrain avoidance. Contribute to sensor fusion across radar, camera and other modalities. Build local and global planners that use map and sensor data. Make practical trade-offs on constrained onboard compute (Nvidia Jetson). Validate behavior with simulation, telemetry and real-world data, building your own Python tooling. What You Bring 5+ years in autonomous systems or robotics software Strong C++ Shipped production autonomy algorithms on physical hardware Comfort across the full autonomy stack Nice to Have Autonomous driving, aerospace, defense or maritime experience ROS, sensor fusion and GPU computing Tech Stack C++, Python, Nvidia Jetson, ROS, sensor fusion, simulation, Linux, computer vision, motion planning