Experienced Drone Robotics Perception AI / ML Software Developer

At WingXpand® Locations: Chicago (Schaumburg), IL | St. Louis, MO

‍Type Full-time

About WingXpand WingXpand is Expanding What’s Possible™ with Autonomous Systems, building long-endurance, backpackable smart plane drones and robotics systems that support defense, public safety, disaster response, and commercial missions. Our platforms operate across air, ground, and maritime domains, integrating autonomy, AI-powered sensing, edge computing, and networked systems to deliver real-world intelligence and threat detection. We design, build, and deploy complete systems — hardware, software, and data — and we move fast. As WingXpand scales, we are seeking high performers to grow with our team.

Position Description We are seeking an experienced drone perception AI / ML software developer to join our team. The successful candidate will be responsible for designing, developing and implementing real time navigation, mapping, sensing, detection, and alerting algorithms for our WingXpand™ Drone platforms. This is a unique opportunity to follow the full software lifecycle from concept to integration and testing on real-world production aircraft.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop and implement algorithms for navigation, mapping, perception, and decision-making
• Integrate software systems with drone hardware, including onboard sensors
• Integrate perception algorithms into autopilot software feedback loop
• Refine software parameters to improve performance through software simulations, lab and flight assessments
• Seamlessly collaborate with hardware and manufacturing engineers to achieve aircraft performance requirements and ensure compatibility
• Leverage and maintain a scalable software development workflow, including writing clear, well documented and easy to maintain code

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in computer science, software engineering, electrical engineering, robotics or a related field
• 3+ years of experience in software development, with a focus on autonomy systems.
• Strong skills in C++ and Python
• Expertise in machine learning and artificial intelligence approaches utilizing sensor data, especially experience with SLAM, VIO, computer vision and control systems
• Experience with integrating software with onboard computers like Rasberry Pi, NVIDIA Jetson, and VOXL
• Additional experiences desired with TensorFlow Lite, YOLO, Google Colab, ROS, and Ubuntu
• Strong expertise in selecting, creating and implementing perception, edge AI, and machine learning algorithms in the real world
• Expert at developing image detection models and has experience training deep-learning models in an end-to-end fashion based on use case requirements
• Familiar with developing software architecture, data networking concepts, testing and debugging software
• Experience with agile software development workflows and has ability to fully build software from source files, leveraging GitHub
• Self-starter eager to learn and dive into new projects with strong communication and teamwork skills

Additional Qualifications

• Familiarity with RTOS and network protocols (e.g., TCP/IP, MQTT) for real-time embedded applications.
• Understanding of cloud computing platforms and services for backend support and AI model operations.
• Prefer those with a background in developing and flying drones
• Prefer those with a proven track record of succeeding in fast paced environments

What Else You Need To Know To conform to U.S. Government aerospace technology export regulations, applicant must be a 'U.S. Person' (U.S. Citizen or a Permanent Resident/Green Card Holder).

If you are a self-motivated, results-driven individual with a passion for innovation and technology, we want to hear from you!