Autonomy Senior Machine Learning Engineer

US-CA-Santa Cruz | US-CA-Concord

Flight Research

Regular Full-Time

Joby Advanced Development designs, develops, and flight-tests novel aircraft using a software-first autonomy approach. We build and deploy autonomy, perception, planning, and radar systems across conventional, electric, and hydrogen-electric aircraft in both CTOL and VTOL configurations.

Joby Advanced Development is seeking an Autonomy Senior Machine Learning Engineer, to design and build the state-of-the-art perception and reasoning algorithms for our Superpilot™ autonomy stack. This position offers a unique opportunity to enable our aircraft to safely and autonomously navigate their complex environment. In this role, you will design and develop solutions for aircraft autonomy involving perception, navigation, and other applications.

You will work closely with other software engineers and AI experts in computer vision, robotics, navigation, and controls. The role requires deep expertise with machine learning algorithms, hands-on software engineering, and autonomous systems industry experience.

You will train perception models and develop robust perception software for autonomous flight. Further, you will also apply a data-centric approach to creating AI solutions for simulation, mapping, and advanced sensing with cameras, lidars, and radar. Your work will help teams deploy state-of-the-art AI algorithms and systems for autonomous flight on multiple types of aircraft.

We are a small, high-impact team that values curiosity, technical initiative, and the ability to operate independently. You will collaborate deeply with sensing, controls, and flight software engineers to build a foundation that accelerates our path to safe, autonomous flight. The right candidate is a strong autonomy machine learning engineer who cares deeply about system design, software engineering, and enabling fast, safe iteration across multiple aircraft programs.

• Autonomy ML Development
  • Design, train, and maintain state-of-the-art ML models for perception on autonomous aircraft
  • Combine deep learning and 3D computer vision techniques for sensor fusion, navigation, and detect-and-avoid
  • Build high-performance model training pipelines and extensive evaluation systems to ensure reliability and quality
• Autonomy Technical Solutions
  • Optimize and tune real-time AI perception algorithms for autonomous aircraft
  • Contribute to software development for data management, annotation, and curation
  • Contribute to autonomy modeling, simulation, and analysis software tooling
• Collaborate closely with the rest of the Superpilot™ team to ideate, plan and execute on high-quality, well-integrated solutions and features
• Monitor system health and performance, proactively addressing issues and providing user support

• Degree in computer science, aerospace engineering, or related field
• 8+ years of experience in machine learning
• Experience in developing software and systems for autonomous vehicles
• Strong proficiency in python
• Extensive practical knowledge of state-of-art models for real-time perception
• Deep understanding of 3D computer vision and machine learning for video
• Ability to invent and quickly prototype technical solutions in autonomy
• Proven ability to document complex technical designs, architectural trade-offs, and implementation roadmaps
• Champion of software best practices, including rigorous code reviews and mentorship
• Excellent communication skills for collaborating with cross-functional teams

• Expert-level software engineering: deep expertise in architecting and writing clean, scalable, and maintainable code
• Professional software development experience with…