Director of Autonomy

Director Of Autonomy

As the Director of Autonomy, you will lead the technical direction, execution, and growth within HavocAI's autonomy organization. You will be responsible for building and scaling the systems that enable autonomous vehicles to perceive, plan, coordinate, and operate in complex maritime environments.

This is a senior technical leadership role for someone who has deep experience across robotics, perception, motion planning, controls, and fielded autonomous systems. You will lead teams of engineers from a technical perspective, set architecture and execution priorities, mentor senior engineers, and ensure that autonomy capabilities move quickly from concept to deployed mission capability.

This role requires both breadth and depth. You should be able to reason across perception, planning, control, vehicle behavior, multi-agent coordination, simulation, testing, and deployment. You will work closely with engineering, product, field operations, hardware, mission software, and customer-facing teams to deliver robust autonomy systems that operate reliably in the real world.

Autonomy Technical Leadership

• Own the technical direction for HavocAI's autonomy systems across perception, planning, controls, behaviors, and vehicle-level decision-making

• Define autonomy architecture, interfaces, development standards, and integration strategies across multiple engineering teams

• Lead technical tradeoffs across performance, safety, reliability, latency, compute constraints, scalability, and mission needs

• Ensure autonomy capabilities are designed for real-world maritime operations, not just simulation or controlled environments

• Drive technical alignment between autonomy, perception, mission software, embedded systems, hardware, and field operations

Robotics, Planning & Control Systems

• Guide development of motion planning, path planning, behavior planning, control, and vehicle autonomy systems

• Oversee autonomy capabilities for navigation, collision avoidance, target following, station keeping, formation behavior, and multi-vessel coordination

• Ensure autonomy algorithms are robust to uncertain environments, degraded sensors, dynamic contacts, and complex maritime operating conditions

• Partner with perception and sensor teams to ensure autonomy systems use perception outputs effectively and safely

• Drive the maturation of autonomy from prototype capabilities into reliable, repeatable, fielded systems

Team Leadership & Mentorship

• Lead and mentor a high-performing team of autonomy, robotics, perception, planning, and controls engineers

• Provide technical guidance to engineering managers, tech leads, and senior individual contributors

• Establish strong engineering practices around design reviews, architecture reviews, testing, simulation, integration, and field readiness

• Help recruit, evaluate, and develop top technical talent across the autonomy organization

• Create a culture of ownership, technical rigor, speed, and mission focus

Fielded Autonomy Execution

• Drive autonomy development from requirements through design, implementation, simulation, field test, deployment, and operational iteration

• Ensure autonomy systems are testable, observable, debuggable, and measurable in real-world environments

• Use field data, logs, test results, and operator feedback to identify gaps and improve system performance

• Support customer demonstrations, operational evaluations, and field deployments as a senior technical leader

• Build feedback loops between field failures, autonomy improvements, and product roadmap decisions

Cross-Functional Strategy

• Partner with product and company leadership to define autonomy strategy, technical roadmap, and capability priorities

• Translate customer and mission needs into actionable autonomy requirements and engineering plans

• Communicate technical risks, tradeoffs, and progress clearly to executive, engineering, customer, and program stakeholders

• Collaborate with hardware, manufacturing, operations, and deployment teams to ensure autonomy capabilities are compatible with vessel platforms and field constraints

• Help shape long-term autonomy investment across software, data, simulation, infrastructure, and platform capabilities

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Robotics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field

• 10+ years of experience in robotics, autonomy, autonomous vehicles, unmanned systems, maritime autonomy, aerospace, defense technology, or related fields

• Extensive technical background across robotics, perception, motion planning, control systems, and autonomous system architecture

• Proven experience leading teams of engineers from a technical perspective

• Strong understanding of autonomy software stacks, including perception integration, planning, control, behaviors, simulation, testing, and deployment

• Experience taking robotic or autonomous systems from prototype through fielded deployment

• Strong systems engineering judgment and ability to make architecture-level decisions across complex autonomy systems

• Experience working in Linux-based development environments with modern software engineering practices

• Ability to mentor senior engineers, set technical direction, and raise the engineering bar across teams

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain technical concepts, tradeoffs, and risks to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

• High ownership, strong judgment, and comfort operating in fast-moving, ambiguous environments

• Passion for mission-critical autonomy and real-world robotic systems

• U.S. citizenship and ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance

Preferred Skills

• Advanced degree in Robotics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related technical field

• Experience with autonomous surface vessels, maritime autonomy, naval systems, or maritime domain awareness

• Experience leading autonomy teams in defense, aerospace, robotics, autonomous vehicles, or dual-use technology companies

• Experience with multi-agent autonomy, collaborative autonomy, swarm robotics, or distributed robotic systems

• Deep experience with motion planning, trajectory generation, behavior planning, collision avoidance, controls, or guidance systems

• Experience with perception systems, sensor fusion, radar, EO/IR cameras, AIS, GPS/INS, or other maritime sensor modalities

• Experience with simulation, hardware-in-the-loop testing, autonomy verification and validation, and field test programs

• Familiarity with ROS2, DDS, MOOS-IvP, autonomy middleware, or distributed robotics architectures

• Experience supporting government, DoD, or defense customer programs

• Active or prior security clearance

Location

This role may be based in the Greater Boston area with remote flexibility.