Vehicle Autonomy Lead

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 Vehicle Autonomy Team Lead, you will lead the team responsible for building, integrating, and fielding the on-vehicle autonomy stack for HavocAI’s autonomous surface vessels. This team owns the autonomy capabilities that run onboard our vessels and enable them to safely navigate, execute missions, respond to dynamic maritime environments, and operate reliably in the field.

This is a senior technical leadership role for someone with deep experience in robotics, autonomy software, motion planning, controls, vehicle behavior, and real-world system integration. You will lead a team of engineers from a technical perspective, set engineering priorities, guide architecture decisions, mentor teammates, and ensure that autonomy capabilities are delivered with speed, rigor, and operational reliability.

This role is hands-on and field-oriented. You should be comfortable moving between system design, code review, debugging logs, evaluating autonomy performance, supporting field tests, and working cross-functionally with perception, mission software, embedded systems, hardware, and operations teams.

Key Responsibilities

Vehicle Autonomy Leadership

Lead the technical execution of the on-vehicle autonomy team

Own autonomy capabilities that run onboard autonomous surface vessels, including navigation, planning, control, behaviors, safety logic, and autonomy execution

Define technical priorities, architecture, interfaces, and development standards for vehicle autonomy systems

Guide autonomy design decisions across reliability, latency, safety, compute constraints, mission performance, and field maintainability

Ensure the vehicle autonomy stack is robust, observable, testable, and ready for real-world maritime operations

Team Leadership & Technical Mentorship

Lead, mentor, and support a team of autonomy, robotics, planning, and controls engineers

Provide technical guidance through design reviews, architecture reviews, code reviews, test planning, and field-readiness reviews

Help engineers break down complex autonomy problems into executable technical work

Establish strong engineering practices for autonomy development, integration, simulation, testing, and deployment

Create a team culture built on ownership, technical excellence, mission focus, and fast iteration

Integration, Testing & Field Deployment

Drive autonomy capabilities from concept through implementation, simulation, hardware-in-the-loop testing, field testing, and deployment

Support vessel integration, field tests, customer demonstrations, and operational evaluations

Diagnose and resolve autonomy issues using logs, telemetry, vehicle data, simulation results, and field observations

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

Ensure the team delivers autonomy software that can be operated, debugged, and maintained in real mission environments

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Work closely with perception, mission software, embedded systems, hardware, product, program, and field operations teams

Translate mission needs and product requirements into vehicle autonomy capabilities

Coordinate interfaces between onboard autonomy, mission planning, command and control, sensors, and platform systems

Communicate technical risks, tradeoffs, and progress clearly to engineering and company leadership

Help align vehicle autonomy development with customer needs, deployment timelines, and long-term product strategy

Qualifications

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

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

Strong technical background in vehicle autonomy, motion planning, controls, robotics software, and autonomous system integration

Proven experience leading engineers from a technical perspective, either as a team lead, technical lead, staff engineer, principal engineer, or engineering manager

Experience building and deploying autonomy software on real robotic or autonomous systems

Strong understanding of autonomy software stacks, including planning, control, behaviors, state estimation, sensor integration, simulation, testing, and deployment

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

Strong programming skills in C++ and/or Python

Ability to make sound technical tradeoffs across reliability, safety, performance, maintainability, and schedule

Strong debugging skills across software, hardware, sensors, logs, telemetry, and field operations

Excellent communication skills and ability to align 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

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

Experience with collision avoidance, COLREGs-aware planning, path planning, trajectory generation, behavior planning, guidance, navigation, or control systems

Experience with multi-agent autonomy, collaborative autonomy, distributed robotic systems, or coordinated vehicle behaviors

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

Experience integrating perception, radar, EO/IR cameras, AIS, GPS/INS, or other maritime sensor modalities into autonomy systems

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

Experience supporting government, DoD, defense, or dual-use technology programs

Experience operating in startup or fast-moving product engineering environments

Active or prior security clearance

Location

This role may be based remotely, with preference for candidates located in or willing to work from Boston, MA or Rhode Island. Candidates should be comfortable with regular travel for onsite collaboration, vessel integration, field testing, customer demonstrations, program reviews, and deployments.

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 and Wellness Stipend

Our Values:

Innovation: We are driven to break new ground. Every day presents an opportunity to challenge the status quo, think boldly, and deliver advanced solutions that transform the future of defense technology.

Integrity: We hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards, ensuring transparency, accountability, and trust in all our actions and partnerships.

Mission-Driven: We are focused on achieving impactful outcomes that align with our core mission—protecting lives through innovation.

Forward-Leaning: W