Senior Autonomy Engineer, Skydio

Deep Learning

$170-236.5k

Python
C++
Senior level
San Francisco Bay Area

Office located in San Mateo, CA

Skydio

Drone manufacturer

Job no longer available

Skydio

Drone manufacturer

501-1000 employees

B2BArtificial IntelligenceManufacturingDrones

Job no longer available

$170-236.5k

Python
C++
Senior level
San Francisco Bay Area

Office located in San Mateo, CA

501-1000 employees

B2BArtificial IntelligenceManufacturingDrones

Company mission

To make the world more productive, creative, and safe with autonomous flight.

Role

Who you are

  • If you are excited about solving open-end problems in object detection and tracking, motion prediction, flow estimation, and total scene understanding, while leveraging massive amounts of structured video data, we would love to hear from you
  • Demonstrated hands-on experience creating and deploying deep learning models
  • Experience curating synthetic and real-world image datasets
  • Solid software engineering foundation and commitment to writing clean, well-architected code (in Python or C++, preferably both)
  • Real experience prototyping, training, optimizing, and deploying deep neural networks
  • Ability to read and contextualize scientific papers and literature in computer vision
  • Ability to thrive in a fast paced, collaborative, small team environment

What the job involves

  • Learning a semantic and geometric understanding of the world from visual data is the core of our autonomy system. We are pushing the boundaries of what is possible with real-time deep networks to accelerate progress in intelligent mobile robots
  • Design and implement deep learning solutions that solve detection, tracking, segmentation, and optical flow estimation tasks in real-time on Skydio drones
  • Leverage state-of-the-art methods in unsupervised learning, few shot learning, and foundational models for data efficient ML
  • Curate and enhance synthetic data that powers our deep learning algorithms along with massive amounts of structured video data
  • Refine and optimize models for low-latency on embedded hardware
  • Characterize and quantify the performance of the vision systems
  • Research and prototype new approaches
  • Be a generalist helping out on all aspects of the software when needed

Our take

A leader in autonomous flight, Skydio builds drones that can track and film targets while avoiding obstacles. Its products have a wide range of applications, most notably for businesses that need to undertake inspections in unsafe places. The drones are also valuable to search and rescue efforts, police forces, and the US army.

Backed by a range of top investors and strategic partners (including Andreesen Horowitz, Levitate Capital, and Next 47) Skydio sets itself apart from its competitors by marketing its products predominantly to businesses. With technology such as 3D scanning and a 360-degree superzoom mode, its drones have a wide range of applications and functionality.

The company raised funding in 2023, which has boosted its valuation to over $2 billion. It has since focussed on R&D, developing and launching the X10 model which is designed for first responders and the military, as well as enhancing its remote control and thermal imaging capabilities. As the largest American drone company, there is no reason Skydio shouldn't remain a key industry actor for years to come.

Kirsty headshot

Kirsty

Company Specialist

Insights

Top investors

Some candidates hear
back within 2 weeks

24% employee growth in 12 months

Company

Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)

Feb 2023

$230m

SERIES E

Feb 2021

$171m

SERIES D

Total funding: $571m

Company benefits

  • Work from home opportunities

Company values

  • We consider the holistic impact our products have on communities and countries
  • We use our role as a leader in autonomous flight technology to promote the responsible development and use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • We proactively promote best practices on the responsible use of our products with our customers
  • We engage in policy and regulatory efforts to support laws, policies, and standards aligned with our values
  • We engage in a responsible way with public sector customers in the United States and other free societies
  • We will not sell our products to repressive regimes
  • We will not put weapons on our drones and will oppose fully autonomous lethal weapons systems
  • We seek to create connections between our employees and the customers we serve beyond simply providing products and services
  • We seek to provide flexibility and freedom for people to choose what they work on

Company HQ

Western Hills, San Mateo, CA

Founders

Having studied at MIT, they spent a year and a half at Google as a Software Engineer. They left this position in February 2014 to co-found Skydio.

Earned a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, and was a Software Engineer for Google's Project Wing.

Previously a Research Assistant at MIT Media Lab and a Mobile Engineer at Pocket Gems.

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