Chief Engineer, Autonomous Counter-UAS

Location: Remote – United States
Travel: 25%
Compensation: $200,000-$275,000 base (negotiable depending on experience) + meaningful equity

About the Company

Our client is a venture-backed defence technology startup founded by senior former military and government leaders. The company develops low-cost, fully autonomous interceptor systems designed to defeat one-way attack drones.

Having successfully demonstrated its technology in government test events, the company is now moving from prototype development towards scaled manufacturing.

The Opportunity

The company is seeking a Chief Engineer to lead the technical direction and engineering development of its autonomous counter-UAS platform.

This is a senior, hands-on leadership position requiring someone who can bring hardware and software disciplines together, guide a multidisciplinary engineering team and take a proven system through its final maturity milestones and into production.

What You’ll Do

• Own the overall system architecture and engineering roadmap through testing, evaluation and production.
• Lead systems engineering across airframe, avionics, sensors, autonomy software and propulsion.
• Drive hardware and software integration across the complete platform.
• Provide technical direction to multidisciplinary engineering teams and identify capability gaps.
• Lead design reviews, technical decisions, system integration and testing activities.
• Support hands-on engineering and flight testing when required.
• Work with manufacturing partners to improve design maturity and production readiness.
• Represent engineering in customer engagements, government evaluations and technical reviews.

What You’ll Bring

• Approximately 12-15 years of engineering experience, including leadership of multidisciplinary teams.
• Strong systems engineering and hardware/software integration experience.
• Experience leading complex aerospace, defence, autonomous or mission-critical systems.
• Ability to develop system architecture, technical roadmaps and engineering strategies.
• A balance of strategic leadership and hands-on technical expertise.
• Experience taking products through development, testing and production.
• U.S. citizenship and eligibility to obtain and maintain a security clearance.
• Willingness to travel regularly for on-site work and test events.

Nice to Have:

• Experience with UAS, missiles, munitions, interceptors or autonomous defence platforms.
• Background in a defence technology startup or fast-growing engineering organisation.
• Experience with contract manufacturers, DFM and scaling production.

Why Join?

You’ll have significant ownership of the technical direction, help shape the engineering organisation from the ground up, and work alongside an experienced founding team with deep military and defence expertise.

Darwin Recruitment is acting as an Employment Agency in relation to this vacancy.

Nikyle Maipath