Demo

Autonomy Engineer

MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Lexington, MA Full Time
POSTED ON 5/5/2026
AVAILABLE BEFORE 6/3/2026
The Homeland Sensors and Analytics Group designs, builds, and fields solutions that significantly enhance the tactical decision-making process of analysts and operators who secure the homeland. This includes security for critical infrastructure, land and maritime borders, transportation systems, and soft targets / crowded places. It also includes support for law enforcement, special operations, and intelligence analysts who track and disrupt transnational criminal and terrorist organizations. To do this, the group works on a combination of novel sensing technologies, algorithms, and data analytics techniques to provide better threat awareness to decision makers. The group designs systems that collect and process a wide range of data types — including radar, visible imagery and video, non-visible imagery, text, time-series data, and 3D point clouds — often applying advanced machine learning methods to convert raw data into actionable insights. The group places an emphasis on taking technology from the concept phase through deployment and transition to achieve operational impact.

Job Description

Our autonomy algorithms & prototyping team is seeking highly motivated autonomy engineers who are interested in solving challenging technical problems and help build advanced technologies for high impact missions with DHS and DoW mission sets. This position is to support the development, implementation, and testing of autonomous aerial and maritime systems specifically focusing on multi-agents planning and coordination, perception, navigation, simulation, and system in the loop implementations. The candidate will be in a team-oriented development environment working on fast-paced development goals. The candidate should be willing to work on-site in the office 3 or more days a week, due to the nature of the work involving hardware, algorithms, and indoor/outdoor test environments.

Additionally, the candidate should be willing to travel for up to 2 months to support developments in other countries.

Required Skills

  • PhD with relevant school work experience, or MS 3 years, or BS 5 years of proven experience in Robotics and Autonomy
  • Expertise in algorithms development for multi-agents planning and coordination, perception, and navigation
  • Expertise in lightweight algorithms development for low-SWaP (size, weight, and power) edge processing
  • Working familiarity with ROS2, MOOS, Ardupilot, simulation environments such as Gazebo, Scrimmage (or other tools), as well as system in the loop implementations
  • Writing software or firmware in one of the following: C, C , Python, Rust, or Java
  • Familiarity with Linux distributions and command-line interface
  • System-level design, system architecture, or trade studies
  • Strong written and oral communication
  • Candidate must be comfortable leading teams and operating in a dynamic and fast-moving environment


Recent Graduate Hiring Range: $145,200 - $170,000

Experienced Hiring Range: $145,200 - $220,000

Disclaimer: MIT Lincoln Laboratory provides a typical hiring range as a good faith estimate of what we reasonably expect to offer for this position at the time of posting. The final salary offered to a selected candidate will depend on various factors, including—but not limited to—the scope and responsibilities of the role, the candidate’s experience, skills and education/training, internal equity considerations and applicable legal requirements. This range reflects base salary only and does not include additional forms of compensation or benefits.

At MIT Lincoln Laboratory, our exceptional career opportunities include many outstanding benefits to help you stay healthy, feel supported, and enjoy a fulfilling work-life balance. Benefits offered to employees include:

  • Comprehensive health, dental, and vision plans
  • MIT-funded pension
  • Matching 401K
  • Paid leave (including vacation, sick, parental, military, etc.)
  • Tuition reimbursement and continuing education programs
  • Mentorship programs
  • A range of work-life balance options
  • ... and much more!


Please visit our Benefits page for more information. As an employee of MIT, you can also take advantage of other voluntary benefits, discounts and perks .

Selected candidate will be subject to a pre-employment background investigation and must be able to obtain and maintain a Secret level DoD security clearance.

MIT Lincoln Laboratory is an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, veteran status, disability status, or genetic information; U.S. citizenship is required.

Requisition ID: 42961

Salary : $145,200 - $170,000

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