UAS Engineer — Autonomy

Iwa Robotics develops autonomous robotic systems for emergency management and infrastructure operations. We're hiring a UAS Engineer to bring up our aerial platforms end-to-end — from airframe integration and avionics wiring through autonomy software, flight testing, and deployment.

What You'll Do

Bring up new aerial platforms end-to-end: airframe integration, avionics stack, power distribution, flight controller and companion computer setup

Select and integrate flight controllers, ESCs, motors, propellers, receivers, telemetry radios, and peripherals

Flash, configure, and extend the PX4 flight stack for custom airframes and mission profiles

Build ROS2-based autonomy pipelines on NVIDIA Jetson companion computers integrating flight control, perception, and mission execution

Integrate, wire, and calibrate sensor suites (IMU, GPS/RTK, LiDAR, cameras, rangefinders, payloads) with the flight stack

Tune controllers, estimators, and mixers for new platforms — from bench to first flight to production

Develop autonomous behaviors including waypoint missions, obstacle avoidance, precision landing, and BVLOS operations

Build and run HIL/SITL simulation environments (Gazebo) for regression testing before field trials

Own flight testing end-to-end: pre-flight checks, test cards, log analysis, root cause on anomalies

Partner with mechanical, electrical, and systems engineers on new platform design reviews and iteration

What We're Looking For

B.S. or M.S. in Robotics, Aerospace Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field

2+ years working hands-on with UAS/drones in a product or serious research environment

Proven track record bringing up new aerial platforms from bare airframe to autonomous flight

Deep experience with PX4 — not just using it, but modifying modules, writing uORB messages, tuning controllers, and debugging at the source level

Hands-on experience deploying autonomy software on NVIDIA Jetson (Orin, Xavier, or Nano) — including setup, cross-compilation, and performance tuning

Strong ROS2 development skills in C++ and Python

Hardware integration fluency: soldering, crimping, wiring harness design, reading schematics, power budget analysis

Experience selecting and integrating ESCs, motors, flight controllers, and avionics for custom platforms

Proven flight test experience — you've put real aircraft in the air and brought them back

Proficiency analyzing flight logs (PX4 ULog, QGC, PlotJuggler, Flight Review)

Experience with MAVLink, MAVROS/MAVROS2, and uXRCE-DDS

Hands-on attitude — you're comfortable in the field, at the bench, and in the code

Bonus

FAA Part 107 certification

RTK GPS integration and precision navigation

Computer vision and perception pipelines (OpenCV, ROS2 perception, TensorRT)

Experience deploying ML models on Jetson (TensorRT, DeepStream)

Large or heavy-lift platform experience (10+ kg MTOW)

VTOL or hybrid airframe bring-up experience

ArduPilot experience as a secondary stack

Contributed to open-source PX4, ROS2, or MAVLink projects