Senior Autonomy Software Engineer (Maritime)

Job description

ABOUT ODIN DYNAMICS Founded in 2025, Odin Dynamics is a defense technology company building autonomous underwater vehicles that will define the next era of undersea warfare. We are focused on delivering capable, resilient autonomous systems that strengthen the strategic advantage of the United States and its allied navies. We move fast, build real hardware, and operate with the urgency that the mission demands. We are building a new platform from the ground up. This is not a role where you will inherit a mature product with every architectural decision already made. You will take incomplete requirements, early hardware, and difficult technical constraints and turn them into dependable, production-ready autonomy systems. We value rigorous engineering without unnecessary process. Decisions should be driven by physics, test data, and product outcomes—not inherited convention or documentation volume. THE ROLE Odin Dynamics is hiring a Senior Autonomy Software Engineer to serve as the Responsible Engineer for the autonomy and perception stack of our autonomous underwater vehicle platform. This engineer will own the complete autonomy software lifecycle: requirements, architecture, algorithm design, implementation, model training, validation, simulation, integration, field testing, sea-trial support, production support, failure analysis, and continued improvement after deployment. This is not a research-only role, and it is not a narrow application-software role. You will be expected to develop autonomy algorithms, implement them in production software, validate them against real-world operating conditions, and remain accountable for their behavior in the field. The role spans autonomy, perception, decision-making, planning, machine learning, classical computer vision, sensor fusion, simulation, testing, and mission-level behavior. You will work closely with Avionics engineers on sensing architecture and sensor selection, with Embedded Software engineers on platform and sensor integration, and with Test Engineering on validation in laboratory, field, and sea-trial environments. This is a hands-on individual-contributor position. You will be expected to write substantial production code, train and evaluate models, analyze autonomy performance from logs and field data, make technical decisions, mentor other engineers, and remain accountable for the performance and reliability of the autonomy stack. There are no organizational handoffs when a difficult problem crosses the boundary between electrical, software, mechanical, manufacturing, or test engineering. WHAT YOU’LL DO - Serve as the Responsible Engineer for the autonomy and perception stack. - Develop greenfield autonomy software from initial requirements and architecture through field-tested, production-ready implementation. - Own autonomy behavior across mission planning, path planning, localization, state estimation, sensor fusion, perception, obstacle avoidance, recovery behavior, and fault-aware decision-making. - Design and implement algorithms for object detection, recognition, classification, tracking, mapping, navigation, and autonomous decision-making. - Develop both machine-learning-based and classical perception approaches, selecting the appropriate method based on mission requirements, data availability, compute constraints, reliability, and test evidence. - Train, validate, evaluate, and improve perception and autonomy models using real, simulated, and replayed data. - Build and maintain data workflows for model evaluation, scenario replay, regression testing, performance analysis, and failure investigation. - Write, review, test, profile, and debug production software in appropriate systems and autonomy-development languages. - Use modern machine learning frameworks for model development, training, evaluation, and deployment. - Develop performance-conscious autonomy software under real-world compute, latency, memory, power, reliability, and observability constraints. - Collaborate with Avionics engineers on sensor selection, sensing architecture, sensor trade studies, and practical perception requirements. - Collaborate with Embedded Software engineers on platform integration, sensor interfaces, data pipelines, timing, logging, diagnostics, and deployment. - Work with Test Engineering to validate autonomy behavior in simulation, laboratory, field, and sea-trial environments. - Develop and maintain autonomy test environments, including: - HOOTL — hardware-out-of-the-loop / SIL — software-in-the-loop - HIL/HITL — hardware-in-the-loop - Scenario-based simulation and replay - Model validation and regression testing - Analyze vehicle behavior from logs, telemetry, simulation results, field tests, and sea trials to identify root causes and drive corrective improvements. - Define metrics for autonomy performance, perception quality, model reliability, mission success, and failure modes. - Build automated development workflows using modern build systems, continuous integration, static analysis, profiling, model-evaluation pipelines, and automated testing. - Produce concise, functional engineering documentation that enables implementation, testing, operation, and future development. - Use AI-assisted development tools to accelerate implementation, testing, debugging, data analysis, and documentation while independently validating outputs and maintaining a first-principles understanding of the resulting system. - Mentor other engineers and contribute to technical reviews without moving away from hands-on engineering. WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR - Deep practical experience developing autonomy, perception, planning, or robotics software for real-world systems. - Strong proficiency in at least one systems programming language. - Strong proficiency in a scripting language commonly used for autonomy development, data analysis, model development, testing, and automation. - Experience with machine learning or deep learning for perception, classificat