Drone Autonomy Engineer Site Job Town of Hartford Wisconsin USA,Software Development

Build the autonomy that makes Rownd's drones navigate, estimate state, plan trajectories, and fly real missions: from ROS2 architecture and control loops to weekly runway testing.

This role is available only in the Greater Richfield / Slinger / Hartford, Wisconsin area.

Candidates must already be local or willing to relocate. The role includes regular in-person collaboration and weekly flight testing from Hartford Airport. RTP is not an option.

Compensation $90,000 - $130,000 DOE + meaningful equity

Location Greater Richfield / Slinger / Hartford, Wisconsin area; RTP is not an option for this role

Flight testing Weekly hands-on flight-line operations from Hartford Airport

Travel 4-8 trips per year for field tests, live-fire integration, and domestic or international military exercises

About Rownd

Autonomy that leaves simulation behind.

Rownd is a fast-paced technology and hardware startup building 100% autonomous physical assets for defense and commercial use. We build the full drone from the ground up and write software that makes physical systems navigate, sense, and act in the real world.

This is not a pure simulation role. Simulation matters, but so do flashed microcontrollers, HITL testbeds, noisy sensors, tuned control loops, flight logs, and standing on the runway while your autonomy code flies a fully physical mission.

You will own work from ROS2 architecture and state estimation through flight-control integration, hardware validation, and field testing alongside Rownd's electrical, aerospace, and vision teams.

Autonomy architecture

Build the stack from estimation to actuation.

Design and optimize ROS2 nodes for mission management, state machines, path planning, trajectory generation, and collision avoidance.

Sensor fusion and estimation

Implement and calibrate EKFs, factor graphs, and multi-sensor pipelines spanning IMUs, optical flow, GNSS, RTK, LiDAR, and vision feeds.

Develop and deploy visual-inertial odometry, SLAM, and GPS-denied navigation routines for contested or degraded environments.

Flight controls and middleware

Tune PX4 and Ardu Pilot control loops and build reliable MAVROS or Micro-XRCE-DDS bridges between edge compute and flight controllers.

Field testing and airport operations

Flash microcontrollers, tune PID, MPC, or LQR control loops, and move software beyond simulation onto physical hardware.

Coordinate in person with Rownd's electrical, aerospace, and vision teams throughout the workday.

AI-assisted software and operations

Use Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT, and other coding agents to write, refactor, test, and debug production C++ and Python.

Build AI-assisted flight-log parsing and telemetry analysis tools that quickly identify control errors and sensor anomalies.

Attend daily team standup at 10:30 AM EDT; on hybrid days, join with camera on and ready to engage.

Own autonomy work streams end to end across architecture, integration, testing, flight operations, and field feedback.

A robotics builder who works on real hardware.

Proven experience building and deploying software within ROS or ROS2, PX4, or Ardu Pilot ecosystems on physical robots or drones.

Degree in Robotics, Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent hard-won experience building autonomous systems.

Strong proficiency in modern C++17/20 and Python for real-time and robotics systems.

Strong foundation in PID control, trajectory planning, EKF state estimation, sensor fusion, and calibration.

Hands-on experience moving software out of simulation and debugging motors, ESCs, IMUs, optical sensors, and flight controllers.

Active experience or strong eagerness to use agentic AI coding tools to multiply engineering output.

Must live in or relocate to the Greater Richfield / Slinger / Hartford, Wisconsin area and be ready for regular in-person collaboration.

U.S. citizen eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. Security Clearance.

Able to travel 4-8 times per year for client field tests and domestic or international military exercises.

Culture, trust, and expectations

High trust, exceptionally high expectations.

Figure it out

You will not receive perfect requirements or clean sensor data. Solve real-world noise, GPS-denied estimation, and navigation failures until the platform works.

Ambiguity, rapid pivots, and fast-moving technical changes should push you to adapt, test, and build.

Positive and collaborative

We look for people who make the team better: additive, collaborative, positive, and genuinely great to work with. No brilliant jerks.

Hard…