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.

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:

We continuously seek out new opportunities and remain at the forefront of technological advancements. We embrace change and anticipate the challenges of tomorrow with confidence and creativity.

Ownership of All Tasks:

At HavocAI, no problem is too complex or too trivial. We believe that greatness comes from tackling the hardest challenges, but also in handling the smallest, sometimes thankless, tasks with the same level of commitment and care.

Servant Leadership:

We lead by serving others, whether it’s supporting our employees, partners, or the broader community. Empowering those around us is key to achieving long-term success and making a lasting impact.