Autonomy Lead

Skyways designs, builds, and operates fully autonomous long-range cargo aircraft. Founded in 2017, the company has spent the last eight years developing and deploying autonomous logistics systems for real-world operations.

Our V2 aircraft carries 30 lbs up to 500 miles, while our next-generation V3 carries 100 lbs over 1,000+ miles with 20+ hours of endurance. Both use a hybrid-electric architecture that takes off like a helicopter and cruises like a plane, enabling long-range autonomous delivery without traditional runway infrastructure.

Today, Skyways aircraft operate across three continents in controlled national airspace under FAA oversight and in support of U.S. military operations. We are transitioning from prototype development to full-rate production and scaling toward large autonomous cargo fleets.

Backed by Y Combinator and a $37M AFWERX STRATFI award from the U.S. Air Force, Skyways is creating a new form of transportation to advance our civilization from Austin, Texas.

The Opportunity

Every Skyways aircraft flies without a pilot.

As our Autonomy Lead, you'll own the software that makes that possible while leading the team responsible for building it.

You'll lead a team of three autonomy engineers and own the development of the systems that allow our aircraft to understand the world, estimate their state, plan missions, and make decisions throughout flight. You'll define technical direction for autonomy while remaining deeply involved in architecture, implementation, testing, and flight debugging.

This is not a role focused on research or simulation alone. Our aircraft fly real customer missions today, and you'll work directly with flight operations, GNC, and hardware teams to continuously improve autonomy using real operational data.

We're looking for someone who has built and deployed autonomy on real robotic or autonomous systems and wants to lead a small, highly technical team while continuing to solve difficult engineering problems.

What You'll Do:

• Lead, manage, and grow a team of three autonomy engineers, owning their hiring, development, and performance
• Own the autonomy architecture across perception, state estimation, planning, and mission execution
• Define technical strategy and make engineering tradeoffs balancing reliability, performance, and operational complexity
• Remain hands on by designing, implementing, and reviewing critical autonomy software
• Partner closely with GNC, flight software, hardware, and flight operations teams to deliver integrated aircraft capabilities
• Develop validation strategies across simulation, ground testing, and flight testing
• Use flight logs, telemetry, and operational data to identify failures and improve autonomy performance
• Drive continuous improvement of autonomy using real world operational feedback and data
• Debug complex system level issues spanning software, hardware, and aircraft operations
• Help establish engineering standards, development processes, and technical direction for the autonomy organization

What You'll Bring:

• Experience developing and deploying autonomy systems on robotic, UAV, or autonomous vehicle platforms
• Direct people management experience, including ownership of engineer performance and development
• Strong understanding of autonomy systems including perception, state estimation, planning, and decision making
• Expert proficiency in C++ and Python
• Experience deploying software to real world robotic systems rather than research only environments
• Experience debugging autonomy failures using logs, telemetry, and system level analysis
• Ability to work across software, hardware, and flight operations teams
• Strong engineering judgment and ability to make practical technical tradeoffs

Bonus Points:

• Experience developing autonomous aircraft or advanced UAV systems
• Background in robotics, computer vision, localization, or motion planning
• Experience with embedded or real time systems
• Experience with ROS2 or similar robotics frameworks
• Experience deploying machine learning or autonomy systems to resource constrained platforms
• Experience supporting flight testing or operational autonomous vehicle deployments

Relocation assistance provided.

Ready to help build the future of autonomous aviation? We'd love to hear from you.

Due to U.S. government contract requirements, this role is limited to U.S. citizens, U.S. permanent residents, or candidates from specific countries authorized under applicable export control regulations.

Skyways is an Equal Opportunity employer committed to diversity in the workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, protected veteran status or any other factor protected by applicable local, state or federal laws.