Senior Software Engineer - Mission Autonomy (All Genders)

About Us

STARK is a new kind of defence technology company revolutionizing the way autonomous systems are deployed across multiple domains. We design, develop and manufacture high-performance unmanned systems that are software-defined, mass-scalable, and cost-effective. This provides our operators with a decisive edge in highly contested environments.

We're focused on delivering deployable, high-performance systems - not future promises. In a time of rising threats, STARK is bolstering the technological edge of NATO Allies and their Partners to deter aggression and defend Europe - today.

About the team

We move fast, ship real software, and operate under constraints most engineers never encounter — low-bandwidth networks, air-gapped devices, high-stakes decision loops. There is no room for abstraction for its own sake. Everything we build ends up in the hands of real operators in the field

.

Our Team is dedicated to a mission of pure strikes.

Your mission

As a Senior Software Engineer with a focus on Aerial Swarming, you will play a critical role in enabling real-time cooperative autonomy onboard next-generation multi-UAV platforms. You will work directly with decentralized routing networks, ROS2-based systems, and embedded compute platforms to build robust, efficient, and scalable swarming functionality.

You will contribute as a highly skilled individual contributor—hands-on with the system—bridging diverse codebases, optimizing real-time communications, and taking software from simulation through field deployment. Your work will be essential to ensuring that our autonomous multi-vehicle systems operate reliably in real-world, resource-constrained environments.

Responsibilities

• Develop and integrate real-time cooperative control, decentralized routing, and perception algorithms on embedded platforms such as NVIDIA Jetson devices.
• Architect and optimize multi-agent communication networks utilizing ROS2 and DDS architectures to ensure reliable data distribution in challenging environments.
• Implement and maintain Software-in-the-Loop (SITL) and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HITL) testing environments to rigorously validate swarming features before physical flight.
• Collaborate with AI, controls, and hardware teams to ensure tight integration between swarming behaviors and other onboard subsystems.
• Profile and debug system performance under embedded constraints (compute, thermal, bandwidth), ensuring stability and robustness in multi-vehicle field deployments.
• Contribute to system-level architecture discussions with a focus on communication reliability, modularity, and clean C++ implementation.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Aerospace, or a related technical field.
• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience in robotics, aerospace, or autonomous systems.
• Expert-level proficiency in modern C++ (C++17/20) for low-latency, multi-threaded embedded and robotics development.
• Deep, hands-on knowledge of ROS2 and a strong foundational understanding of DDS architectures for real-time communication.
• Strong experience working with embedded Linux platforms, particularly NVIDIA Jetson devices, and hardware interfaces.
• Familiarity with autonomous swarming algorithms (e.g., flocking, consensus, decentralized task allocation) deployed on physical multi-vehicle systems is highly desirable.
• Strong problem-solving and debugging skills, especially in real-time or resource-constrained environments.
• Effective communicator and team player in multidisciplinary engineering teams.
• Willingness to travel occasionally for field testing and deployment.

For further information please reach out to Sally Grütte-Pad, Interim Lead TA Partner via [email protected]