Director of Autonomy

About Us:

Havoc is a leader in all-domain collaborative autonomy. Its software-defined hardware approach powers military and commercial-grade autonomous systems across sea, air, and land to sense, decide, and act together in complex and contested environments. Havoc connects assets, enabling them to share information, adapt in real time, and continue operating even when communications are disrupted or denied. Havoc optimizes mission performance and minimizes human risk.

Havoc was founded in 2024 and headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island. Learn more at Havoc: All-Domain Collaborative Autonomy .

About the Role

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.

Key Responsibilities

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.

Benefits:

100% Employer paid Health, Dental and Vision Insurance for you and your families

Life Insurance (Employer Paid)

Ability to participate in the companies 401k program (Matching)

Unlimited PTO policy with an enforced 2 week minimum

Equity Package

Work / Home Office Stipend

Global Entry

16 Week Paid Parental Leave

Monthly Health a