Autonomous Warfare Technical Director, AI Robotics & DoD Systems
Overview
Autonomy leadership role guiding the strategy and technical execution of next generation warfare capabilities at scale. Lead architecture, risk management, and integration across hardware, software, and enablement technologies for government and vendor teams. Collaborate with program managers, operators, and partners to drive credible demonstrations toward fielded products. Distinguishing focus on reliability, cybersecurity, sustainment, and manufacturability.
What You'll Do10
- 1Build and drive technical execution across autonomous warfare programs to ensure timely integration of hardware, software, and enabling technologies
- 2Design and shepherd system architectures for autonomous platforms and human machine teams, including perception, planning, control, and communications
- 3Lead problem definition through transition and fielding, evaluating commercial and government systems for maturity, reliability, and mission relevance
- 4Define requirements, test strategies, data approaches, and transition standards to produce credible evidence of performance, robustness, and safety
- 5Collaborate with government partners and vendors to manage prototype development and non traditional partnerships throughout the lifecycle
- 6Mentor engineers, review design milestones, and resolve technical blockers to meet reliability and scalability goals
- 7Establish interfaces with academia and industry to stay ahead of capabilities impacting direction
- 8Assess autonomy stacks across sensing, localization, decision making, and interface design for mission effectiveness
- 9Drive evaluation criteria, risk management, and safety compliance across land, sea, air, cyber, and space programs
- 10Lead governance and documentation to ensure maintainability, repeatability, and field readiness
Requirements10
- 1Bachelor’s degree + 10 years of relevant experience; OR Master’s degree + 7 years of relevant experience; OR High School Diploma or equivalent and 15 years relevant experience
- 2Deep expertise in autonomy, robotics, AI, or related fields
- 3Experience fielding production grade systems outside controlled environments
- 4Strong technical judgment across perception, planning, control, computing, and data
- 5Experience defining requirements, designing tests, analyzing performance, and making evidence based decisions
- 6Understanding of CI/CD, reliability, cybersecurity, and sustainment in production engineering
- 7U.S. Citizenship and ability to obtain TS/SCI clearance and travel up to 30%
- 8Experience with unmanned systems, autonomous vehicles, or industrial robotics (preferred)
- 9Leadership roles such as CTO, chief engineer, or engineering director (preferred)
- 10Familiarity with modular open architectures, interoperability, data rights, and third party integration
Salary Insight
$205 - $225k per year
Location
Required Skills
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