Engineering Manager, Autonomy Planning & Behaviors

Merlin Labs · Remote (Boston, Massachusetts) · Posted 2025-08-12

About Merlin:

Merlin (NASDAQ: MRLN) is a publicly traded aerospace and defense company building a non-human pilot to deliver full-stack autonomy for any aircraft from takeoff to touchdown. The Merlin Pilot autonomy system powers a growing range of aircraft and mission profiles and has been proven through hundreds of autonomous flights from Merlin's global flight test facilities, including Kerikeri, New Zealand; Quonset Point, Rhode Island; and soon, Bedford, Massachusetts. Headquartered in Boston, Merlin is expanding its organization to accelerate the development and deployment of its autonomy platform, helping customers solve some of aviation's most pressing challenges, from pilot shortages to improving flight safety. Backed by some of the world's leading investors prior to its public listing, Merlin continues to advance the certification and commercialization of autonomous flight across commercial and defense aviation.

About you:

You are an experienced engineer with a background in autonomous systems, aviation, and robotics who wants to lead Merlin’s direction when it comes to decision making and behaviors for mission autonomy. You understand both the commercial and military aviation domains, and enjoy pushing the boundaries on crewed and uncrewed technology to make aviation safer and to be a force multiplier for our military. You have developed and deployed autonomy for airborne systems, have a deep understanding of the techniques enabling mission management and decision making, and understand how to build and test scalable teams of autonomous systems. You want to focus more on leading and driving technical direction, but can get your hands dirty with day-to-day software development and experimentation when it’s needed.

Responsibilities:

Drive the technical direction and deliver autonomous decision making, behavior execution, and motion planning capabilities for airborne systems.

Define the research, experiments, and development projects that support delivering mission autonomy capabilities.

Identify gaps and define staffing needs to develop and deliver decision making and behavior capabilities.

Ensure the decision making, behaviors, and motion planning technical plans align with short term R&D objectives, long term objectives, and the Merlin technology roadmap.

Lead architecture design and perform architecture and technology trade-off analysis, accounting for short term objectives and long term goals in decision making.

Step in to a hands-on software development role as needed.

Support simulation, integration, and flight test activities to validate real-world performance.

Collaborate across Merlin to develop novel systems to solve the toughest problems in aviation and autonomy.

Qualifications:

Degree in Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, Robotics Engineering, or a related subject.

Years of professional experience developing software for airborne autonomous systems.

Subject matter expert in one or more of the following:

Mission management frameworks such as behavior trees, hierarchical task networks, state machines, petri nets.

Single- and multi-vehicle autonomy, resource allocation, and decision making algorithms.

Airborne contingency and emergency management.

Machine learning for complex decision making and behavior generation.

Years of experience providing tech leadership to a team of at least 4 engineers at different levels.

Proficiency in modern software development workflows and practices, including version control, pipelines, and unit testing, and peer review.

Experience with overall product development cycle, including design, testing, and troubleshooting at the system level as well as at the software component level.

Proficiency writing both Python and C++.

Familiarity with simulation software, especially aircraft simulation.

Experience with proposal writing and technical roadmap development.

Nice to Have

Experience with ROS, DDS, or similar middleware for robotics/autonomy systems.

Experience with government open architectures such as A-GRA, OMS and FACE.

Experience developing and/or using modern avionics systems.

Experience with hardware and software integration and debugging.

Experience with flight testing (uncrewed or crewed aircraft).

Awareness of aviation certification standards such as DO-178.

Pilot license and flight experience is a plus.

This position is based on-site at Merlin HQ in Boston, MA.

Once you’re here, you’ll enjoy a variety of on-site perks designed to make your workday enjoyable and convenient. These include catered lunches featuring a rotating menu of delicious options, an assortment of snacks to keep you fueled throughout the day, and a selection of beverages, including coffee, tea, and other drinks, to keep you refreshed.

Our goal is to create an environment where you can thrive both professionally and personally

Merlin Labs offers an innovative, entrepreneurial, and team-focused startup environment. We also offer a top-notch benefits package (health, dental, life, unlimited vacation, and 401k with match) and work/life integration. Being part of the Merlin team allows you to become part of a small team that supports professional development while working together to achieve our mission.

Merlin Labs is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy), gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, military service or obligation or disability status, or any other characteristic protected by law. All job offers are contingent upon the candidate passing background and reference checks.

At this time, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship or consider candidates who require visa transfers. Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States without the need for visa sponsorship now or in the future.

In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form upon hire.

If you require reasonable accommodation in completing an application, interviewing, completing any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participating in the employee selection process, please direct your inquiries to: people@merlinlabs.com

Merlin Labs does not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than directly from candidates.

About Merlin Labs

Merlin Labs develops hardware and software solutions that deliver the capability for aircraft to fly useful missions autonomously.