Senior Autonomy Engineer - Deep Learning

Overview

Skydio is the leading U.S. drone company and the world leader in autonomous flight, the key technology for the future of drones and aerial mobility. The Skydio team combines deep expertise in artificial intelligence, best‑in‑class hardware and software product development, operational excellence, and customer obsession to empower a broader, more diverse audience of drone users—from utility inspectors to first responders, soldiers in battlefield scenarios, and beyond.

Learning a semantic and geometric understanding of the world from visual data is the core of our autonomy system. We are pushing the boundaries of real‑time deep networks to accelerate progress in intelligent mobile robots. If you are excited about solving open‑ended problems in object detection and tracking, motion prediction, flow estimation, and total scene understanding while leveraging massive amounts of structured video data, we would love to hear from you.

• Design and implement deep learning solutions that solve detection, tracking, segmentation, and optical flow estimation tasks in real‑time on Skydio drones.
• Leverage state‑of‑the‑art methods in unsupervised learning, few‑shot learning, and foundational models for data‑efficient ML.
• Curate and enhance synthetic data that powers our deep learning algorithms along with massive amounts of structured video data.
• Refine and optimize models for low‑latency on embedded hardware.
• Characterize and quantify the performance of the vision systems.
• Research and prototype new approaches.
• Be a generalist helping out on all aspects of the software when needed.

• Demonstrated hands‑on experience creating and deploying deep learning models.
• Experience curating synthetic and real‑world image datasets.
• Solid software engineering foundation and commitment to writing clean, well‑architected code (in Python or C++, preferably both).
• Real experience prototyping, training, optimizing, and deploying deep neural networks.
• Ability to read and contextualize scientific papers and literature in computer vision.
• Ability to thrive in a fast‑paced, collaborative, small team environment.

At Skydio, our compensation packages for regular, full‑time employees include competitive base salaries, equity in the form of stock options, and comprehensive benefits packages. Compensation will vary based on factors, including skill level, proficiencies, transferable knowledge, and experience. Relocation assistance may also be provided for eligible roles. Fundamentally, we believe that equity is the key to long‑term financial growth, and we ensure all regular, full‑time employees have the opportunity to significantly benefit from the company's success.

Regular, full‑time employees are eligible to enroll in the Company’s group health insurance plans and receive paid vacation time, sick leave, holiday pay, and a 401(k) savings plan. This position and all associated benefits are subject to applicable federal, state, and local laws, as well as the Company’s policies and eligibility criteria.

Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or other characteristics protected by federal, state or local anti‑discrimination laws.

Skydio provides equal employment opportunities to applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, or disability.

Skydio is a federal contractor or subcontractor subject to certain governmental record‑keeping and reporting requirements for the administration of civil rights laws and regulations. Employment decisions are made on the basis of job‑related criteria without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, age, genetic information, national origin, disability, military, or veteran status, or any other classification protected by applicable law.

We invite all applicants to voluntarily self‑identify their race, ethnicity, and gender.