Autonomy & Robotics Software Engineer

The opportunity

Build autonomy software for the Pterops platform, with aircraft as the starting point. The work focuses on coordinated multi-aircraft missions, computer vision and navigation when GNSS is unavailable or unreliable. You will develop and evaluate these capabilities for integration with Pterops OS, keeping human supervision, approved operating limits and traceable outcomes central to the design.

Full-time in Athens, with hybrid flexibility for software development and in-person hardware integration and testing. You will collaborate across Pterops OS, mission software and aircraft engineering. Workshop setup is part of our Athens hardware programme; specific facilities and on-site arrangements will be discussed during the hiring process.

What you’ll own

• Develop multi-UAV coordination and swarming behaviours, including mission task allocation and formation keeping, with explicit operator authority and operating constraints.
• Develop and evaluate vision AI, visual odometry and visual-inertial odometry for navigation in GNSS-denied or degraded environments.
• Work on camera and IMU calibration, time synchronisation, state estimation and localisation robustness across changing conditions.
• Integrate perception, localisation and planning components with Pterops OS interfaces and autopilot communications.
• Measure and improve accuracy, latency, compute and power requirements for onboard execution.
• Build repeatable evaluation using recorded datasets, simulation and hardware tests, covering degraded sensing, interrupted communications and recovery behaviour.
• Work with aircraft and avionics engineers on sensor integration, test instrumentation and validation; document results and capability limits.

What you’ll bring

• Strong C++ and Python skills, with experience implementing and debugging robotics or computer-vision software.
• Depth in at least one of visual odometry or SLAM, sensor fusion and state estimation, motion planning, or multi-robot coordination, with the ability to work across adjacent areas.
• Experience taking an algorithm beyond a notebook into a reproducible software component with tests and measurable performance.
• A practical understanding of coordinate frames, timing, uncertainty and failure modes in systems that combine sensors and motion.
• Experience with Linux, version control and profiling, and the ability to investigate behaviour across software and hardware.
• Clear technical communication, ownership of engineering decisions and availability for in-person integration work in Athens.

Useful experience

These are helpful additions to your core experience.

• UAV autonomy, cooperative robotics, distributed coordination or formation-control research and implementation.
• Visual-inertial odometry, SLAM, camera calibration, IMU fusion or learned visual perception.
• ROS 2, OpenCV, simulation tools, ArduPilot, PX4 or MAVLink.
• GPU or embedded AI deployment, model optimisation, Rust or constrained onboard computing.
• Hardware-in-the-loop evaluation and structured field testing of robotic systems.

Tell us about your work

Describe a robotics, navigation or vision system you personally built. Explain the algorithm, the hardware or datasets involved, how you measured performance and what happened when conditions degraded. Include a non-confidential code, paper, video or project link if available, and tell us about your availability for hybrid work in Athens.

Please share only work you are permitted to disclose. Keep confidential client, employer and operational information out of your application.