Senior Software​/Robotics Engineer - Navigation & Planning

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Company
Founded in 2020, Ribbit builds and operates autonomous airplanes. We develop technology that enables uncrewed gate-to-gate operations, having completed hundreds of autonomous flight hours on different aircraft, flown 10K+ hours in simulation, and secured flight authorities for remotely and optionally piloted flight. From defending sovereignty to delivering food and medical supplies, we are a trusted partner that businesses and governments rely on to test, operate, and deploy affordable autonomous aircraft.

You can check out our videos here.

We believe that technology should be developed for and with the customer. In 2023, we signed our first federal contract with the Government of Canada, during which we performed Canada’s first autonomous gate-to-gate flight between two airports. Since then, we have won several additional contracts, including contracts with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the Department of National Defence (DND) spanning platform, mission, and collaborative autonomy.

We pride ourselves on knowing the customer better than themselves, serving them better than anyone else, and ensuring they succeed in a world with everyone else.

This year alone, we performed the world's first demonstration of collaborative teaming between an autonomous airplane and an autonomous helicopter. We also deployed Canada's first optionally piloted aircraft with a military callsign. We are now building novel autonomous aircraft for DND and Canada's allies, aligning our immediate defence clients with a backlog of interest across northern wholesalers, public safety agencies, freight forwarders, and humanitarian organizations.

Autonomy is reshaping the way we move, understand, and protect the world.

Our team has years of experience with piloting, commercial drone operations, and autonomous mobile robotics—we're concentrating the world's best software, robotics, and aeronautical expertise to pursue our mission of making air transportation accessible to everyone. If you're up for the challenge, we want to hear from you.

Position Overview
As a Senior Navigation Engineer, you will collaborate with peers to:

Lead development of the navigation stack: mission and flight planning, trajectory generation, and the guidance targets passed to the flight controller. You will shape its architecture and roadmap, lead design reviews, and hold the bar on code quality

Work with the other navigation engineers to deliver high-quality software, scoping the work and keeping design, review, and release standards consistent

Stay hands-on: write production C++, review the hardest changes, and prototype new capability

Represent navigation in design reviews with the state estimation, controls, interfaces, and flight-test teams, and mentor the engineers who join the team

Support flight trials, analyse flight data, and turn operational and pilot feedback into navigation improvements

Your Key Objectives Will Include

Developing flight planning for every phase of flight (takeoff, departure, cruise, circuit, approach, landing, loiter, search) using standard aviation procedures

Planning in three dimensions within aircraft performance (turn radius, climb and descent rates, speed schedules) and constraints such as terrain, obstacles, and airspace

Owning global navigation accuracy on the WGS
84 ellipsoid (geodesics, ECEF/NED/ENU…