Vice President of Autonomy

About Merlin: 

Merlin is a venture backed aerospace startup building a non-human pilot to enable both reduced crew and uncrewed flight. Backed by some of the world’s leading investors, Merlin is scaling alongside our customers to begin leveraging autonomy today to solve some of aviation’s biggest challenges.

About the Role: 

We’re building the brains of the airplane. As the Vice President of Autonomy, you’ll lead the team responsible for developing Merlin’s core autonomy software—spanning flight control, navigation, perception, decision-making, and higher-level mission behaviors. This role sits at the heart of the Merlin Pilot product and is critical to our mission of enabling safe, airworthy, and intelligent autonomous flight across a diverse fleet of aircraft. You will manage a high-performing software team focused on building and integrating autonomy layers that operate in real time on safety-critical airborne platforms. You'll partner closely with the Systems Engineering, Compute Platform, and Simulation teams to ensure delivery of robust, testable, and airworthy software aligned to the broader product roadmap. This is a hands-on leadership role—equal parts technical strategy/innovation, people leadership, and delivery accountability.

About You:  

You are a proven technical leader with deep experience in autonomy software—whether from aviation, space, robotics, or high-assurance systems. You know what it takes to build safety-critical autonomy: modular architectures, clear interfaces, strong simulation support, and rigorous development processes. You thrive in fast-paced environments, value clean code and crisp interfaces, and can coach engineers to balance innovation with engineering discipline. You get excited when your software flies.