Lead Autonomy Engineer (Defence)

Job description

A high-growth physical AI and autonomy business is expanding its European engineering capability and is looking for a Defence Autonomy Engineer to help lead the development of mission-critical autonomy solutions for defence customers.

This is a hands-on technical role working across perception, planning, and system architecture. You’ll operate close to real-world deployment, building high-performance autonomy software that moves beyond prototype into production environments.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Designing, developing, and verifying high-performance autonomy solutions
• Building and deploying state-of-the-art ML models for defence use cases
• Developing perception and planning algorithms for real-world systems
• Optimising model and system performance for production environments
• Translating product requirements into robust technical solutions
• Collaborating closely with cross-functional engineering and product teams
• Mentoring junior engineers and contributing to team growth
• Driving continuous improvement, testing, and documentation standards

What They’re Looking For

• Proven experience developing autonomous systems in aerospace or defence
• Strong end-to-end deep learning development experience
• Expertise across areas such as:
• Modelling
• Data/input pipelines
• Evaluation and deployment
• Model optimisation
• 5+ years building production-grade software using modern practices
• Strong C++ or Python (with working C++ capability)
• UK Security Clearance

Nice to Have

• Publications in computer vision, robotics, or NLP
• Experience with UAVs
• Experience improving system-in-the-loop performance

Travel

• Occasional travel to UK/international offices and customer sites as required

Extra information

Status

Open

Education Level

Secondary School

Location

City of London

Type of Contract

Full-time jobs

Published at

09-03-2026

Full UK/EU driving license preferred

No

Car Preferred

No

Must be eligible to work in the EU

No

Cover Letter Required

No

Languages

English