Software Engineer - Autonomous Air Systems

WHO WE ARE Helsing is a defence AI company. Our mission is to protect our democracies. We aim to achieve technological leadership, so that open societies can continue to make sovereign decisions and control their ethical standards.  As democracies, we believe we have a special responsibility to be thoughtful about the development and deployment of powerful technologies like AI. We take this responsibility seriously.  We are an ambitious and committed team of engineers, AI specialists and customer-facing program managers. We are looking for mission-driven people to join our European teams – and apply their skills to solve the most complex and impactful problems. We embrace an open and transparent culture that welcomes healthy debates on the use of technology in defence, its benefits, and its ethical implications.  THE ROLE You’ll build the autonomy brain for a cutting-edge autonomous aerial platform that will actually take flight. At Helsing, you won't just be developing software; you'll be integrating state-of-the-art reinforcement learning agents into the operational systems of our own Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV), the CA-1 Europa, part of the groundbreaking Centaur project. This is a unique opportunity to directly contribute to a novel autonomous system designed from the ground up. Working at the intersection of machine learning and systems engineering, you'll integrate reinforcement learning agents into high-performance runtime systems, enabling real-time autonomous decision-making in flight. This isn't theoretical; your code will enable the CA-1 Europa to perceive, reason, and act autonomously in the most demanding environments. What we build ultimately ends up in the hands of real people in high-risk, high-stress situations, so it must be both reliable and frictionless. To give some examples: - Autonomous Decision-Making Systems — reliable pipelines from sensor data to RL inference to tactical execution, including edge-case and failure-mode handling. - Reinforcement Learning Integration — bridging Python-based RL agents with Rust runtime systems for low-latency, reproducible inference. - Distributed Systems & Communications — handling intermittent connectivity and bespoke hardware protocols. - Training Infrastructure — distributed training, evaluation pipelines, and large-scale runs on custom simulators. In some areas, we're working at the state-of-the-art—actively implementing research papers and pushing further. In others, we're applying proven techniques to real-world situations they've never encountered before. Both require skill, diligence, and deep technical understanding. Our software operates under significant constraints, in constantly-changing environments, for users in high-risk situations. It must be reliable and frictionless. That's what makes this work hard—and worth doing. THE DAY-TO-DAY - Maintain our existing software stack, including working with internal and external customers to identify issues, improving operational reliability and performance, and fending off technical debt. The stack is a mix of Rust and Python, with Python mainly living in the ML-heavy sections. - Further develop our tests and benchmarks, both at the micro and macro level, including hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulations and flight testing. We operate in a domain where robustness is of the utmost importance, and an extensive and ever-improving test suite is key to achieving that. And without thorough benchmarks, we would be flying blind. - Review code contributions, proposals, and RFCs from colleagues, ensuring robustness and adherence to safety and performance standards critical for airborne applications. At Helsing we strongly believe that unblocking others takes precedence over spending more time on your own work. - Propose and implement new features, capabilities, algorithms, infrastructure, or even full products across our stack, with a focus on refining the capabilities and reliability of our airborne mission systems. We encourage our engineers to look beyond their immediate team for missed opportunities, and to speak up when they identify one. - Become a mentor, find a mentee, and help support and develop our interviewing pipeline. The people make or break the company, and we want as many engineers as possible to be part of fostering and growing the organisation. - Share your experience and technical know-how with other Helsingers. We host tech talks, get together for smaller “let’s learn together” groups, run topical office hours (e.g., on Rust), etc. to help each other get better with time. YOU SHOULD APPLY IF YOU - Can write legible, maintainable, and performant code. - Communicate well in English, both verbally and in writing. - Enjoy collaborating with others, including reviewing code and pair programming, particularly on complex system architectures involving tight hardware-software integration on a real-world aerial platform. - Are comfortable working asynchronously (writing PRs and RFCs, having discussions by email). - Have strong backend or embedded development experience, ideally with a language like Rust, Go, or C++. - Feel comfortable working with Python with the ML-heavy sections of the stack. - Strive to improve yourself, your peers, and the culture you work in over time. - Feel like ethical considerations are an inherent part of engineering. Note: We operate at an intersection where women, as well as other minority groups, are systematically under-represented. We encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet all the listed qualifications; ability and impact cannot be summarised in a few bullet points. NICE TO HAVE - Rust and Python specifically. - Experience in deploying Reinforcement Learning or Machine Learning agents in real-world systems - Safety Programming Experience - Familiarity with low-level flight control systems and their interfaces, even if not directly developing them. - Experience with sensor integration (IMUs, GPS, Lidar, Cameras) and sensor fusion techniques for navigation. - Robotics (e.g., control systems). - Production ML systems. - Hardware interfaces (e.g., Arduino). JOIN HELSING AND WORK WITH WORLD-LEADING EXPERTS IN THEIR FIELDS  - Helsing’s work is important. You’ll be directly contributing to the protection of democratic countries while balancing both ethical and geopolitical concerns - The work is unique. We operate in a domain that has highly unusual technical requirements and constraints, and where robustness, safety, and ethical considerations are vital. You will face unique Engineering and AI challenges that make a meaningful impact in the world - Our work frequently takes us right up to the state of the art in technical innovation, be it reinforcement learning, distributed systems, generative AI, or deployment infrastructure. The defence industry is entering the most exciting phase of the technological development curve. Advances in our field of world are not incremental: Helsing is part of, and often leading, historic leaps forward - In our domain, success is a matter of order-of-magnitude improvements and novel capabilities. This means we take bets, aim high, and focus on big opportunities. Despite being a relatively young company, Helsing has already been selected for multiple significant government contracts - We actively encourage healthy, proactive, and diverse debate internally about what we do and how we choose to do it. Teams and individual engineers are trusted (and encouraged) to practise responsible autonomy and critical thinking, and to focus on outcomes, not conformity. At Helsing you will have a say in how we (and you!) work, the opportunity to engage on what does and doesn’t work, and to take ownership of aspects of our culture that you care deeply about WHAT WE OFFER - A focus on outcomes, not time-tracking - Competitive compensation and VSOP options - Relocation support - Social and education allowances - Regular company events and all-hands to bring together employees as one team across Europe   Helsing is an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability or gender identity. Please do not submit personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, data concerning your health, or data concerning your sexual orientation.