Senior – Principal Robotics Software Engineer

Locations:

Chicago (Schaumburg), IL

‍Type

Full-time | Open 6/30/26 | Close 7/14/26

About WingXpand

WingXpand is Expanding What’s Possible™ with Autonomous Systems, building long-endurance, backpackable smart plane drones and robotics systems that support defense, public safety, disaster response, and commercial missions. Our platforms operate across air, ground, and maritime domains, integrating autonomy, AI-powered sensing, edge computing, and networked systems to deliver real-world intelligence and threat detection. We design, build, and deploy complete systems — hardware, software, and data — and we move fast. As WingXpand scales, we are seeking high performers to grow with our team.

Position Description

WingXpand is building the next generation of autonomous systems—highly portable robotic platforms that deliver real-time intelligence where it matters most. We are seeking a Senior / Principal Robotics Software Engineer to help design, build, and deploy the autonomy and robotics software that powers these systems. This is a hands-on engineering role for someone who enjoys seeing their code operate in the real world. You will develop robotics software that runs directly on our robotic platforms and supporting systems, integrating new sensors, building autonomy behaviors, and testing systems in real operational environments. You will work closely with a multidisciplinary team of hardware, aerospace, and software engineers to bring new capabilities to life—from perception and autonomy to collaborative robotic behaviors across multiple systems. The ideal candidate enjoys both writing robust software and deploying it to real robotic platforms, iterating quickly through testing, field validation, and continuous improvement.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and develop robotics and autonomy software for WingXpand’s autonomous platforms
• Implement and improve autonomous behaviors, navigation systems, and mission logic
• Integrate new sensors, payloads, and perception capabilities into the robotics stack
• Develop software supporting collaborative robotic systems and multi-agent coordination
• Deploy, test, and validate robotics software on real robotic platforms and supporting infrastructure
• Work closely with hardware, avionics, and systems engineers to integrate and optimize performance
• Troubleshoot, debug, and improve system reliability across software and hardware interfaces
• Participate in testing, experimentation, and rapid iteration of new capabilities
• Contribute to system architecture and long-term autonomy development

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Robotics, or a related field
• 5 to 10+ years of professional software engineering experience with C++ in a Linux development environment, PX4, and ROS.
• Experience testing, evaluating, and troubleshooting robotic systems.
• Ability to quickly understand and navigate complex systems and established codebases.
• Proven experience designing and implementing modular, scalable software solutions.

• Master’s in a relevant field
• Experience developing software or hardware for flight systems and safety-critical functionality.
• Background in programming for embedded computing systems such as Nvidia Jetson
• Experience with distributed communication networks and messaging standards.
• Experience using containerization technologies like Docker
• Prior experience flying or working on drone systems.

To conform to U.S. Government aerospace technology export regulations, applicant must be a 'U.S. Person' (U.S. Citizen or a Permanent Resident/Green Card Holder).

If you are a self-motivated, results-driven individual with a passion for innovation and technology, we want to hear from you!