Who We Are:
Aurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.
We're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.
Our namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate, small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.
In addition to our San Francisco lab, we've opened a Detroit manufacturing hub and we field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.
The Role and Your Impact:
We need a Senior Robotics Software Engineer who's a true workhorse on the Archimedes robotics stack. You write real production C++ across tracking, control and autonomy, and you raise the bar on how we ship. You'll work directly alongside our engineering leadersgup, owning features end to end while championing the QA and CI/CD practices that keep fielded software reliable. You're the senior IC who writes the code, makes it fast, then makes sure it survives contact with the field.
What You'll Own:
Hands-on C++ development across the stack, from raw sensor data through tracking, control and autonomy
Threading, process structure, performance and timing analysis on the paths you own
QA practices and test coverage alongside Erick and the Principal, built into how the team works, not bolted on
CI/CD and deployment hygiene for robotics and hardware-in-the-loop
Automated tests and tooling that catch failures before the range does
Code review and raising the quality bar across the robotics SWE team
Cross-functional work with controls, embedded and EE
What We're Looking For:
4+ years writing production software with real shipped systems behind you
Strong production C++ (our core stack is C++, Python is tooling)
Real-time and performance chops: concurrency, profiling, latency and timing analysis
Experience building or operating CI/CD for robotics, hardware-in-the-loop or other hardware-facing systems
A genuine ownership mentality toward quality. You've seen what bad test discipline costs in the field and you fix it without being asked
Where you probably come from: Robotics companies that shipped to customers or operators, defense robotics, AV, aerospace, F1 or high-performance automotive, maritime, embedded or low-level systems work. Domain matters less than shipping.
We want to talk if: You're the engineer who writes the feature and the test for it, profiles it when it's slow, and quietly fixes the CI pipeline everyone else complains about. You've taken software from \"works on my machine\" to \"works in the field.\"
Not a fit if: Your background is web, backend or full stack, you're a QA specialist who doesn't write production code, you're a researcher who hasn't shipped, or you think test discipline is someone else's job.
Nice to Haves:
ROS2
Rust or other systems languages
Motion planning, trajectory optimization, state estimation or sensor fusion
Defense or safety-critical software release experience
Built test automation frameworks for robotics or hardware-in-the-loop
Education: BS, MS or PhD in CS, EE, Robotics or equivalent. Track record matters more than degree.
How You Operate:
Extreme bias for action. You ship working code on real hardware, not slideware
You debug from first principles, not intuition alone
Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment
Clear communicator across software, hardware, and operator-facing surfaces Self directed.
You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told
Why Join Aurelius Systems?
Build more in 1 month than most people build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work makes the whole team faster.
Career velocity is real. With no middle management, there are no layers between you and impact.
Work on a problem that actually matters. Small cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer — infinite magazine, near zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.
Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.
How We Work:
Core hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up — nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show.
Benefits:
Competitive salary + equity
United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage
Flexible 18 days PTO + 5 sick days
Travel to field test events and range days
Covered daily lunches and office snacks + drinks
E-bike / scooter stipend (Up to $500)
Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work
Export Control Notice:
This role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require \"U.S. Person\" status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a \"U.S. Person\": (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).
","descriptionPlain":"Who We Are:\n\nAurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.\n\nWe're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.\n\nOur namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate, small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.\n\nIn addition to our San Francisco lab, we've opened a Detroit manufacturing hub and we field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.\n\nThe Role and Your Impact:\n\nWe need a Senior Robotics Software Engineer who's a true workhorse on the Archimedes robotics stack. You write real production C++ across tracking, control and autonomy, and you raise the bar on how we ship. You'll work directly alongside our engineering leadersgup, owning features end to end while championing the QA and CI/CD practices that keep fielded software reliable. You're the senior IC who writes the code, makes it fast, then makes sure it survives contact with the field.\n\nWhat You'll Own:\n\n - Hands-on C++ development across the stack, from raw sensor data through tracking, control and autonomy\n\n - Threading, process structure, performance and timing analysis on the paths you own\n\n - QA practices and test coverage alongside Erick and the Principal, built into how the team works, not bolted on\n\n - CI/CD and deployment hygiene for robotics and hardware-in-the-loop\n\n - Automated tests and tooling that catch failures before the range does\n\n - Code review and raising the quality bar across the robotics SWE team\n\n - Cross-functional work with controls, embedded and EE\n\nWhat We're Looking For:\n\n - 4+ years writing production software with real shipped systems behind you\n\n - Strong production C++ (our core stack is C++, Python is tooling)\n\n - Real-time and performance chops: concurrency, profiling, latency and timing analysis\n\n - Experience building or operating CI/CD for robotics, hardware-in-the-loop or other hardware-facing systems\n\n - A genuine ownership mentality toward quality. You've seen what bad test discipline costs in the field and you fix it without being asked\n\nWhere you probably come from: Robotics companies that shipped to customers or operators, defense robotics, AV, aerospace, F1 or high-performance automotive, maritime, embedded or low-level systems work. Domain matters less than shipping.\n\nWe want to talk if: You're the engineer who writes the feature and the test for it, profiles it when it's slow, and quietly fixes the CI pipeline everyone else complains about. You've taken software from \"works on my machine\" to \"works in the field.\"\n\nNot a fit if: Your background is web, backend or full stack, you're a QA specialist who doesn't write production code, you're a researcher who hasn't shipped, or you think test discipline is someone else's job.\n\nNice to Haves:\n\n - ROS2\n\n - Rust or other systems languages\n\n - Motion planning, trajectory optimization, state estimation or sensor fusion\n\n - Defense or safety-critical software release experience\n\n - Built test automation frameworks for robotics or hardware-in-the-loop\n\nEducation: BS, MS or PhD in CS, EE, Robotics or equivalent. Track record matters more than degree.\n\nHow You Operate: \n\n - Extreme bias for action. You ship working code on real hardware, not slideware \n\n - You debug from first principles, not intuition alone \n\n - Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment \n\n - Clear communicator across software, hardware, and operator-facing surfaces Self directed. \n\n - You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told\n\nWhy Join Aurelius Systems?\n\n - Build more in 1 month than most people build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work makes the whole team faster.\n\n - Career velocity is real. With no middle management, there are no layers between you and impact.\n\n - Work on a problem that actually matters. Small cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer — infinite magazine, near zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.\n\n - Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.\n\nHow We Work:\n\nCore hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up — nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show.\n\n \n\nBenefits:\n\n - Competitive salary + equity\n\n - United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage\n\n - Flexible 18 days PTO + 5 sick days\n\n - Travel to field test events and range days\n\n - Covered daily lunches and office snacks + drinks\n\n - E-bike / scooter stipend (Up to $500)\n\n - Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work\n\n \n\nExport Control Notice:\n\nThis role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require \"U.S. Person\" status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a \"U.S. Person\": (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)."},{"id":"a317fed4-d6e8-4598-81c5-acfe2129e8e2","title":"Sr. Optical Engineer, R&D","department":"Engineering","team":"Laser & Optics","employmentType":"FullTime","location":"San Francisco","secondaryLocations":[],"publishedAt":"2026-06-30T23:18:05.073+00:00","isListed":true,"isRemote":false,"workplaceType":"OnSite","address":{"postalAddress":{"addressRegion":"California","addressCountry":"United States","addressLocality":"San Francisco"}},"jobUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/a317fed4-d6e8-4598-81c5-acfe2129e8e2","applyUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/a317fed4-d6e8-4598-81c5-acfe2129e8e2/application","descriptionHtml":"Who We Are:
Aurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.
We're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.
Our namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate — small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.
In addition to our San Francisco lab, we’ve opened a Detroit manufacturing hub and we field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.
The Role & Your Impact:
You will own optical system design and help drive critical optical investigations for our hardware platform.
This role is centered on optical expertise first. We are looking for someone who can bring deep experience in optical theory, optical design, and system-level problem solving. You should be able to evaluate tradeoffs, identify better technical paths, and raise the quality of optical decision-making across the team. Mechanical integration matters, but this role is primarily about strong optical judgment rather than owning every mechanical detail yourself.
You will work closely with mechanical and electrical teammates to turn optical designs into robust deployed systems. This is a senior role for someone who can walk into a design review and bring perspectives and strategies the team has not already considered.
What You'll Own:
Lead optical design and analysis for core system components
Drive optical investigations, trade studies, and system-level design decisions
Specify and evaluate optical components and subsystem architectures
Partner with mechanical engineers on packaging, housing, and integration decisions
Support tolerance analysis, performance validation, and design iteration
Lead or guide alignment, characterization, and test efforts for integrated optical systems
Work with vendors and fabricators on manufacturability, tolerancing, and component feasibility
Help establish best practices for optical development, validation, and technical documentation
What We're Looking For:
Strong background in optical engineering, optical design, or related physics-based system work
Deep understanding of optical theory and the ability to apply it to real hardware problems
Experience designing, analyzing, and debugging optical systems in practice
Ability to lead technical investigations from first principles and prior experience
Enough mechanical fluency to collaborate effectively on packaging and integration, without needing to be a pure mechanical owner
Strong hands-on engineering judgment and comfort working across disciplines
Senior-level experience that allows you to guide technical choices with confidence
We want to talk if: If you have experience with alignment and characterization of precise optical systems operating in the real world
Education:
BS or MS in Optical Engineering, Physics, Mechanical Engineering, or related field.
What you've built matters more than where you went to school.
How You Operate:
Extreme bias for action. You'd rather build a prototype tomorrow than model it for a month
Rigorous testing mindset. You characterize your own systems before the field does
Comfortable with ambiguity and fast, constantly iterating in a startup environment
Your brain only releases dopamine when you're building
You debug from first principles, not Stack Overflow
Clear communicator across mechanical, electrical, optical, and software teams
Self-directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told
Why Join Aurelius Systems?
Build more in 1 month than most engineers build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work goes downrange, not into a filing cabinet.
Career velocity is real. Erick Brito went from Founding Robotics Engineer to Lead in 12 months. At ~10 engineers, there are no layers between you and impact… or between you and your next title.
Work on a problem that actually matters. Small, cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer. Think infinite magazine, cost-per-shot near zero, scalable to every base, border, facility, truck and infrastructure.
Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built. You'll be in the room with the people reshaping how America builds weapons.
How we work: Core hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up — nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show.
Benefits:
Competitive salary + equity
United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage
Flexible 18 days PTO + 5 sick days
Travel to field test events and range days
Covered daily lunches and office snacks + drinks
E-bike / scooter stipend ( Up to $500)
Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work
Export Control Notice:
This role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require \"U.S. Person\" status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a \"U.S. Person\": (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).
","descriptionPlain":"Who We Are:\n\nAurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.\n\nWe're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.\n\nOur namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate — small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.\n\nIn addition to our San Francisco lab, we’ve opened a Detroit manufacturing hub and we field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.\n\nThe Role & Your Impact:\n\nYou will own optical system design and help drive critical optical investigations for our hardware platform.\n\nThis role is centered on optical expertise first. We are looking for someone who can bring deep experience in optical theory, optical design, and system-level problem solving. You should be able to evaluate tradeoffs, identify better technical paths, and raise the quality of optical decision-making across the team. Mechanical integration matters, but this role is primarily about strong optical judgment rather than owning every mechanical detail yourself.\n\nYou will work closely with mechanical and electrical teammates to turn optical designs into robust deployed systems. This is a senior role for someone who can walk into a design review and bring perspectives and strategies the team has not already considered.\n\nWhat You'll Own:\n\n - Lead optical design and analysis for core system components\n\n - Drive optical investigations, trade studies, and system-level design decisions\n\n - Specify and evaluate optical components and subsystem architectures\n\n - Partner with mechanical engineers on packaging, housing, and integration decisions\n\n - Support tolerance analysis, performance validation, and design iteration\n\n - Lead or guide alignment, characterization, and test efforts for integrated optical systems\n\n - Work with vendors and fabricators on manufacturability, tolerancing, and component feasibility\n\n - Help establish best practices for optical development, validation, and technical documentation\n\nWhat We're Looking For:\n\n - Strong background in optical engineering, optical design, or related physics-based system work\n\n - Deep understanding of optical theory and the ability to apply it to real hardware problems\n\n - Experience designing, analyzing, and debugging optical systems in practice\n\n - Ability to lead technical investigations from first principles and prior experience\n\n - Enough mechanical fluency to collaborate effectively on packaging and integration, without needing to be a pure mechanical owner\n\n - Strong hands-on engineering judgment and comfort working across disciplines\n\n - Senior-level experience that allows you to guide technical choices with confidence\n \n \n\nWe want to talk if: If you have experience with alignment and characterization of precise optical systems operating in the real world\n\nEducation:\n\nBS or MS in Optical Engineering, Physics, Mechanical Engineering, or related field.\n\nWhat you've built matters more than where you went to school.\n\nHow You Operate:\n\n - Extreme bias for action. You'd rather build a prototype tomorrow than model it for a month\n\n - Rigorous testing mindset. You characterize your own systems before the field does\n\n - Comfortable with ambiguity and fast, constantly iterating in a startup environment\n\n - Your brain only releases dopamine when you're building\n\n - You debug from first principles, not Stack Overflow\n\n - Clear communicator across mechanical, electrical, optical, and software teams\n\n - Self-directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told\n\nWhy Join Aurelius Systems?\n\n - Build more in 1 month than most engineers build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work goes downrange, not into a filing cabinet.\n\n - Career velocity is real. Erick Brito went from Founding Robotics Engineer to Lead in 12 months. At ~10 engineers, there are no layers between you and impact… or between you and your next title.\n\n - Work on a problem that actually matters. Small, cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer. Think infinite magazine, cost-per-shot near zero, scalable to every base, border, facility, truck and infrastructure.\n\n - Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built. You'll be in the room with the people reshaping how America builds weapons.\n\nHow we work: Core hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up — nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show.\n\nBenefits:\n\n - Competitive salary + equity\n\n - United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage\n\n - Flexible 18 days PTO + 5 sick days\n\n - Travel to field test events and range days\n\n - Covered daily lunches and office snacks + drinks\n\n - E-bike / scooter stipend ( Up to $500)\n\n - Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work\n\nExport Control Notice:\n\nThis role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require \"U.S. Person\" status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a \"U.S. Person\": (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)."},{"id":"e2127c6d-611d-4a3e-808e-063c08ee69ba","title":"Test Engineer, R&D","department":"Engineering","team":"Test & Integration","employmentType":"FullTime","location":"San Francisco","secondaryLocations":[],"publishedAt":"2026-03-26T21:25:37.535+00:00","isListed":true,"isRemote":false,"workplaceType":"OnSite","address":{"postalAddress":{"addressRegion":"California","addressCountry":"United States","addressLocality":"San Francisco"}},"jobUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/e2127c6d-611d-4a3e-808e-063c08ee69ba","applyUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/e2127c6d-611d-4a3e-808e-063c08ee69ba/application","descriptionHtml":"Who We Are:
Aurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.
We're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.
Our namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate — small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.
In addition to our San Francisco lab, we’ve opened a Detroit manufacturing hub and we field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.
The Role & Your Impact:
We're hiring a Test Engineer, R&D to build our test infrastructure from the ground up: test automation, harnessing, simulation, and HITL environments.
You'll work closely with hardware, software, and electrical teams to define what needs testing and why, then build the tooling to test it. You're responsible for the process end to end: Test design, execution, analysis, and driving design through findings.
If you're driven to understand how and why robotic systems strain, and to catch these strains before they fail, we'd love to meet you.
What You'll Own:
Testing end-to-end: setup, operation, data collection, teardown, post-test analysis, and failure writeups
Wire test electronics, build harnesses, instrumentation setups, and test fixtures
Develop automated test procedures in Python
Debug across firmware, power rails, and electrical — root cause from first principles
Work directly with embedded, electrical, and mechanical engineers to reproduce bugs, validate fixes, and prevent regressions
Develop test plans, acceptance criteria, and readiness gates as we move from prototype to production
Partner with the hardware team on DFM and production readiness
Build HIL and SIL test environments
Enforce safety procedures in high-power, high-voltage testing environments
What We're Looking For:
Strong electrical wiring and bench skills — scopes, logic analyzers, power supplies, DMMs, harness fabrication
Python or scripting for test automation. You build your own tools.
Strong debugging instincts across firmware, power rails, and electrical
Comfort with DFM concepts — you understand how production constraints shape what's testable
Performance, reliability, and safety testing as a combined skill set. You know how to stress a system, log what breaks, and define pass/fail criteria that actually matter.
Clear written communication around failures and root cause. Your test reports tell a story, not just a data dump.
Robotics or defense companies with real electromechanical products where you wrote test code and wired test setups.
Not a fit if: Your test experience is purely environmental/mechanical (vibe table, thermal chamber operator). Your debugging stops at the firmware layer. You've only operated someone else's test infrastructure. You've never wired your own bench setup. Your test experience lives entirely in Jira.
Nice-to-Haves:
HIL or SIL test environment build experience (we'll need to build these — having done it before is a plus, but not required day one)
MIL-STD, DO-178, or other safety critical testing standards exposure (even if informal)
Environmental, vibration, thermal, or shock testing exposure
High-voltage or high-power test environment experience
Familiarity with ITAR-controlled systems or working in cleared environments
Active security clearance or ability to obtain one
Education:
BS in Electrical Engineering, Mechatronics, Aerospace, or equivalent. Equivalent hands-on experience also considered.
What you've built matters more than where you went to school.
How You Operate:
Extreme bias for action. You'd rather build a prototype tomorrow than model it for a month
Rigorous testing mindset. You characterize your own systems before the field does
Comfortable with ambiguity and fast, constantly iterating in a startup environment
Your brain only releases dopamine when you're building
You debug from first principles, not Stack Overflow
Clear communicator across mechanical, electrical, optical, and software teams
Self-directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told
Why Join Aurelius Systems?
Build more in 1 month than most engineers build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work goes downrange, not into a filing cabinet.
Career velocity is real. At ~10 engineers, there are no layers between you and impact.
Work on a problem that actually matters. Small cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer — infinite magazine, near zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.
Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.
How We Work:
Core hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up — nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show.
Benefits:
Competitive salary + equity
United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage
Flexible 18 days PTO + 5 sick days
Travel to field test events and range days
Covered daily lunches and office snacks + drinks
E-bike / scooter stipend ( Up to $500)
Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work
Export Control Notice:
This role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require \"U.S. Person\" status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a \"U.S. Person\": (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).
If your background fits one of our open roles... apply there. Those postings exist for a reason and you'll get evaluated faster through the right pipeline.
This page is for people who don't see their exact role listed but belong at Aurelius. We're building a short list of people we want to pull from when new roles open, when we spin up internships, or when the right person shows up before the req does.
We review every submission. If you're not a fit, you'll know. If you are, you'll hear from us — maybe this month, maybe in six.
You probably fall into one of these lanes:
You're an ME, integration engineer, systems engineer, controls engineer, or something adjacent — and you've actually built software, or hardware that went into the real world. Maybe you worked on power systems at a FSAE Electric team and went pro. Maybe you've been at a defense startup or eVTOL company where you owned a subsystem end to end. Maybe you're still in school but you've built more in your garage or lab than most people build in their first three years of work.
We care about what you've built, not where you went to school.
You served and you're looking to stay in the fight from the builder side. Maybe you were a combat engineer, Special Operations, EOD, fire controlman, or had a technical MOS/rate. Maybe you ran operations or logistics in environments where things had to work the first time. We value military discipline and bias for action, but we're not collecting DD-214s — we need people who can contribute technically or operationally from day one.
Proposal managers, capture managers, contract administrators, or BD professionals who have actually won contracts with Army, Navy, Marines, or MDA. Not people who worked at a prime and attended reviews. People who wrote the winning sections, managed the compliance matrix, or ran a capture from qualification to award. IDIQ and OTA experience is a plus. If you've only worked commercial or big-company BD where a team of 40 touches a single proposal, we're probably not the right fit.
Growth, strategy, talent, mission operations — whatever you call it, you're the person who makes a small team punch way above its weight. Maybe you've scaled hiring at a defense startup and actually know the difference between a power electronics engineer and a semiconductor process engineer. Maybe you've run field operations, managed test campaigns, or built the operational backbone that lets engineers focus on engineering. Maybe you're a strategy or growth person who's worked in deep tech and understands long DoD sales cycles, IDIQ task orders, and what it takes to go from prototype to program of record. We don't need generalists who \"wear many hats.\" We need people who've operated in high-output, resource-constrained environments and made things move faster than they had any right to.
U.S. citizenship required. We work on classified programs and every role requires the ability to obtain a security clearance.
You'll be in San Francisco or Detroit. We're not remote. The hardware is here and so are you.
Bias for action over credentials. We've hired people without degrees who outperform PhDs. We've also hired PhDs who get their hands dirty. What matters is whether you build things or talk about building things.
Startup pace is real. Core hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we sprint toward a demo or field test, the team goes hard — nights, weekends, whatever it takes. When the sprint lands, we recover. If that sounds like a warning, this isn't for you. If it sounds like home, keep reading.
Don't send a generic resume and cover letter. We read these and generic applications go to the bottom.
Instead, tell us:
Which lane above fits you best and why you think you'd be a fit at Aurelius specifically — not just any defense startup.
The hardest thing you've built or shipped. What was it, what was your role, and what made it hard?
Your resume or LinkedIn — but only after #1 and #2. Those matter more.
If you're not sure whether to apply here or to a specific role, apply to the specific role. This page is for the people who know they belong here but don't see their exact seat yet.
","descriptionPlain":"THIS ISN'T A CATCH-ALL APPLICATION:\n\nIf your background fits one of our open roles... apply there. Those postings exist for a reason and you'll get evaluated faster through the right pipeline.\n\nThis page is for people who don't see their exact role listed but belong at Aurelius. We're building a short list of people we want to pull from when new roles open, when we spin up internships, or when the right person shows up before the req does.\n\nWe review every submission. If you're not a fit, you'll know. If you are, you'll hear from us — maybe this month, maybe in six.\n\n\n\n\nWHO WE'RE LOOKING FOR\n\nYou probably fall into one of these lanes:\n\n\n\n\n1. ENGINEERS WHO BUILD THINGS\n\nYou're an ME, integration engineer, systems engineer, controls engineer, or something adjacent — and you've actually built software, or hardware that went into the real world. Maybe you worked on power systems at a FSAE Electric team and went pro. Maybe you've been at a defense startup or eVTOL company where you owned a subsystem end to end. Maybe you're still in school but you've built more in your garage or lab than most people build in their first three years of work.\n\nWe care about what you've built, not where you went to school. \n\n\n\n\n2. VETERANS WITH TECHNICAL OR OPERATIONAL DEPTH\n\nYou served and you're looking to stay in the fight from the builder side. Maybe you were a combat engineer, Special Operations, EOD, fire controlman, or had a technical MOS/rate. Maybe you ran operations or logistics in environments where things had to work the first time. We value military discipline and bias for action, but we're not collecting DD-214s — we need people who can contribute technically or operationally from day one.\n\n\n\n\n3. DEFENSE BUSINESS OPERATIONS\n\nProposal managers, capture managers, contract administrators, or BD professionals who have actually won contracts with Army, Navy, Marines, or MDA. Not people who worked at a prime and attended reviews. People who wrote the winning sections, managed the compliance matrix, or ran a capture from qualification to award. IDIQ and OTA experience is a plus. If you've only worked commercial or big-company BD where a team of 40 touches a single proposal, we're probably not the right fit.\n\n\n\n\n4. TECHNICAL OPERATORS\n\nGrowth, strategy, talent, mission operations — whatever you call it, you're the person who makes a small team punch way above its weight. Maybe you've scaled hiring at a defense startup and actually know the difference between a power electronics engineer and a semiconductor process engineer. Maybe you've run field operations, managed test campaigns, or built the operational backbone that lets engineers focus on engineering. Maybe you're a strategy or growth person who's worked in deep tech and understands long DoD sales cycles, IDIQ task orders, and what it takes to go from prototype to program of record. We don't need generalists who \"wear many hats.\" We need people who've operated in high-output, resource-constrained environments and made things move faster than they had any right to.\n\n\n\n\nWHAT'S TRUE ACROSS ALL OF THESE\n\n - U.S. citizenship required. We work on classified programs and every role requires the ability to obtain a security clearance.\n\n - You'll be in San Francisco or Detroit. We're not remote. The hardware is here and so are you.\n\n - Bias for action over credentials. We've hired people without degrees who outperform PhDs. We've also hired PhDs who get their hands dirty. What matters is whether you build things or talk about building things.\n\n - Startup pace is real. Core hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we sprint toward a demo or field test, the team goes hard — nights, weekends, whatever it takes. When the sprint lands, we recover. If that sounds like a warning, this isn't for you. If it sounds like home, keep reading.\n\n\nWHAT TO INCLUDE IN YOUR APPLICATION\n\nDon't send a generic resume and cover letter. We read these and generic applications go to the bottom.\n\nInstead, tell us:\n\n 1. Which lane above fits you best and why you think you'd be a fit at Aurelius specifically — not just any defense startup.\n\n 2. The hardest thing you've built or shipped. What was it, what was your role, and what made it hard?\n\n 3. Your resume or LinkedIn — but only after #1 and #2. Those matter more.\n\nIf you're not sure whether to apply here or to a specific role, apply to the specific role. This page is for the people who know they belong here but don't see their exact seat yet."},{"id":"79984e84-c869-489e-a02e-a5a7dd856272","title":"Mechanical Engineer ","department":"Engineering","team":"Hardware","employmentType":"FullTime","location":"San Francisco","secondaryLocations":[],"publishedAt":"2026-08-06T01:09:39.147+00:00","isListed":true,"isRemote":false,"workplaceType":"OnSite","address":{"postalAddress":{"addressRegion":"California","addressCountry":"United States","addressLocality":"San Francisco"}},"jobUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/79984e84-c869-489e-a02e-a5a7dd856272","applyUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/79984e84-c869-489e-a02e-a5a7dd856272/application","descriptionHtml":"Who We Are:
Aurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.
We're a small team of engineers, former US military, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.
Our namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.
In addition to our San Francisco lab, we opened our Detroit manufacturing hub and field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.
The Role and Your Impact:
We need a Mechanical Engineer focused on design ruggedization across Archimedes, as well as survivability against shock, vibration, moisture, and environmental extremes for a fiber laser system in a deployable, field-rugged package. MIL-spec is one of the harder problems in directed energy and is a make-or-break domain for the platform. You'll work hands-on from architecture through bench validation and field correlation.
What You'll Own:
Structural and mechanical design for survivability across MIL-STD shock, vibration, humidity, dust, and austere environments
Ruggedization architecture across the laser source, laser head, and supporting subsystems
Sealing, ingress protection, and moisture/corrosion mitigation strategies (IP ratings, conformal coatings, gasket design)
Vibration isolation system design including isolator selection, snubbing, and modal analysis
Shock analysis and design including fragility assessment, cushion design, and drop/transportation survivability
FEA modeling including static, modal, random vibration, and shock response spectrum analysis
Structural validation including instrumentation, test rigs, and correlation to model
Trades between ruggedization performance, mass, stiffness, and packaging across the system
What We're Looking For:
2 to 5+ years in mechanical engineering on ruggedized or field-deployable systems
Evidence you learn fast. You got effective in a new domain or toolset in months, not years.
Strong FEA experience with ANSYS, Nastran, Abaqus, or equivalent
Hands on experience designing to MIL-STD-810 or equivalent shock and vibration standards
Track record building and instrumenting structural test rigs and correlating model to bench
Experience with sealing, EMI/EMC gaskets, conformal coating, and environmental protection design
Experience designing enclosures and structures for field-deployable or military conditions
Where you probably come from: Defense hardware companies, airborne or ground vehicle systems, ruggedized electronics enclosures, directed energy programs, or field-deployed sensor or radar systems.
We want to talk if: You've designed a system that had to survive shock, vibration, and environmental extremes in a constrained, deployable package. You can model it, build it, instrument it, and correlate it.
Not a fit if: You've only done commercial or consumer product design, your work is simulation-only with no bench validation, or you've never designed to a MIL or DO-160 standard.
Nice to Haves:
Direct laser system or directed energy hardware experience
MIL-STD-461 EMI/EMC design awareness for mechanical hardware integration
Experience with optical bench or precision instrument ruggedization
Field-deployable or vehicle-mounted system experience
Education:
BS or MS in Mechanical, Aerospace, or related engineering field. PhD welcome but not required.
How You Operate:
Extreme bias for action. You'd rather build a prototype tomorrow than model it for a month
You characterize your own systems before the field does
Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment
You debug from first principles, not intuition alone
Clear communicator across mechanical, electrical, optical, and software teams
Self directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told
Why Join Aurelius Systems:
Build more in 1 month than most engineers build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work goes downrange, not into a filing cabinet.
Career velocity is real. With no middle management, there are no layers between you and impact.
Work on a problem that actually matters. Small cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer — infinite magazine, near zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.
Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.
How We Work:
Core hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up — nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show.
Benefits:
Competitive salary and equity
United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage
Flexible 18 days PTO plus 5 sick days
Travel to field test events and range days
Covered daily lunches and office snacks and drinks
E-bike and scooter stipend up to $500
Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work
Export Control Notice:
This role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require U.S. Person status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a U.S. Person: (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).
","descriptionPlain":"Who We Are:\n\nAurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.\n\nWe're a small team of engineers, former US military, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.\n\nOur namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.\n\nIn addition to our San Francisco lab, we opened our Detroit manufacturing hub and field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.\n\nThe Role and Your Impact:\n\nWe need a Mechanical Engineer focused on design ruggedization across Archimedes, as well as survivability against shock, vibration, moisture, and environmental extremes for a fiber laser system in a deployable, field-rugged package. MIL-spec is one of the harder problems in directed energy and is a make-or-break domain for the platform. You'll work hands-on from architecture through bench validation and field correlation.\n\nWhat You'll Own:\n\n - Structural and mechanical design for survivability across MIL-STD shock, vibration, humidity, dust, and austere environments\n\n - Ruggedization architecture across the laser source, laser head, and supporting subsystems\n\n - Sealing, ingress protection, and moisture/corrosion mitigation strategies (IP ratings, conformal coatings, gasket design)\n\n - Vibration isolation system design including isolator selection, snubbing, and modal analysis\n\n - Shock analysis and design including fragility assessment, cushion design, and drop/transportation survivability\n\n - FEA modeling including static, modal, random vibration, and shock response spectrum analysis\n\n - Structural validation including instrumentation, test rigs, and correlation to model\n\n - Trades between ruggedization performance, mass, stiffness, and packaging across the system\n\nWhat We're Looking For:\n\n - 2 to 5+ years in mechanical engineering on ruggedized or field-deployable systems\n\n - Evidence you learn fast. You got effective in a new domain or toolset in months, not years.\n\n - Strong FEA experience with ANSYS, Nastran, Abaqus, or equivalent\n\n - Hands on experience designing to MIL-STD-810 or equivalent shock and vibration standards\n\n - Track record building and instrumenting structural test rigs and correlating model to bench\n\n - Experience with sealing, EMI/EMC gaskets, conformal coating, and environmental protection design\n\n - Experience designing enclosures and structures for field-deployable or military conditions\n\n Where you probably come from: Defense hardware companies, airborne or ground vehicle systems, ruggedized electronics enclosures, directed energy programs, or field-deployed sensor or radar systems.\n\nWe want to talk if: You've designed a system that had to survive shock, vibration, and environmental extremes in a constrained, deployable package. You can model it, build it, instrument it, and correlate it.\n\nNot a fit if: You've only done commercial or consumer product design, your work is simulation-only with no bench validation, or you've never designed to a MIL or DO-160 standard.\n\nNice to Haves:\n\n - Direct laser system or directed energy hardware experience\n\n - MIL-STD-461 EMI/EMC design awareness for mechanical hardware integration\n\n - Experience with optical bench or precision instrument ruggedization\n\n - Field-deployable or vehicle-mounted system experience\n\nEducation:\n\nBS or MS in Mechanical, Aerospace, or related engineering field. PhD welcome but not required.\n\nHow You Operate:\n\n - Extreme bias for action. You'd rather build a prototype tomorrow than model it for a month\n\n - You characterize your own systems before the field does\n\n - Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment\n\n - You debug from first principles, not intuition alone\n\n - Clear communicator across mechanical, electrical, optical, and software teams\n\n - Self directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told\n\nWhy Join Aurelius Systems:\n\n - Build more in 1 month than most engineers build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work goes downrange, not into a filing cabinet.\n\n - Career velocity is real. With no middle management, there are no layers between you and impact.\n\n - Work on a problem that actually matters. Small cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer — infinite magazine, near zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.\n\n - Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.\n\nHow We Work:\n\nCore hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up — nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show.\n\nBenefits:\n\n - Competitive salary and equity\n\n - United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage\n\n - Flexible 18 days PTO plus 5 sick days\n\n - Travel to field test events and range days\n\n - Covered daily lunches and office snacks and drinks\n\n - E-bike and scooter stipend up to $500\n\n - Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work\n\nExport Control Notice:\n\nThis role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require U.S. Person status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a U.S. Person: (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)."},{"id":"d122b688-4212-4b8e-9db2-e5a32a6dac63","title":"Sr. Robotics Engineer, Controls","department":"Engineering","team":"Robotics Software","employmentType":"FullTime","location":"San Francisco","secondaryLocations":[],"publishedAt":"2026-06-30T23:17:56.193+00:00","isListed":true,"isRemote":false,"workplaceType":"OnSite","address":{"postalAddress":{"addressRegion":"California","addressCountry":"United States","addressLocality":"San Francisco"}},"jobUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/d122b688-4212-4b8e-9db2-e5a32a6dac63","applyUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/d122b688-4212-4b8e-9db2-e5a32a6dac63/application","descriptionHtml":"Who We Are:
Aurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.
We're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.
Our namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing.
That's how we operate — small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.
In addition to our San Francisco lab, we’ve opened a Detroit manufacturing hub and we field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.
The Role & Your Impact:
You'll own the precision motion stack, full stop.
The critical gap we're hiring for is a hands-on robotics controls engineer who can iterate fast on real hardware. Someone who can take a model, get it on the hardware, characterize what's actually happening, and tighten the loop. You think in Bode plots and step responses.
This is a senior IC role on the controls side. You'll own the architecture and tuning of the precision pointing and tracking control loops, the state estimation behind them, and the closed loop integration with the tracker.
What You'll Own:
Architecture and tuning of the precision pointing and tracking control loops
Closed loop tracking from sensor input through actuator command at hundreds of Hz
State estimation across IMU, encoder, and vision based feedback (Kalman filters, complementary filters, sensor fusion)
System identification and modeling of the gimbal, mount, and actuator dynamics
Actuator tuning, gain scheduling, and compensation for nonlinearities (backlash, friction, saturation)
Resonance characterization, notch filtering, and structural compensation
Simulation infrastructure for controls development
Hardware-in-the-loop test infrastructure for controls validation
Field characterization of the system against real targets at the range
Author controls documentation and tuning standards
What We're Looking For:
4+ years of experience in robotics
Strong knowledge of fundamentals: classical controls, state space, LQR, MPC
Proven simulation experience and a track record of managing the sim-to-real gap on actual hardware
Modern C++ for real time control implementation
Python or MATLAB/Simulink for modeling, system ID, and analysis
State estimation in practice (Kalman, EKF, UKF, complementary filters)
System identification and frequency domain tuning
Direct experience with motion control hardware — servo drives, brushless motors, encoders, IMUs
Comfortable working at the seam between mechanical, electrical, and software
Understanding of latency, jitter, and how they kill control loop performance
Not a fit if: Your controls experience is purely simulation, your real world tuning amounts to changing PID gains in a UI, or you've never had to characterize a resonance, model an actuator, or fight a sensor that lies to you. We need someone who's tuned hardware that fought back.
Nice-to-Haves:
Advanced MPC — nonlinear MPC, robust MPC, or real-time NMPC on resource constrained hardware
Gimbal, beam director, or precision pointing system experience
Aerospace, defense, or directed energy controls background
Adaptive or robust control implementation in production
Vision-in-the-loop control (visual servoing, image-based tracking)
Hardware-in-the-loop simulation experience
High bandwidth sensor pipelines (cameras, radar, IMUs at high rate)
Prior work on a system that had to hit a moving target
Education:
MS in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or related field is the sweet spot. BS with strong hands-on robotics experience or PhD with a real shipping record both welcome.
How You Operate:
Extreme bias for action. You'd rather tune on hardware tomorrow than model it for a month
Rigorous testing mindset. You characterize your own loops before the field does
Comfortable with ambiguity and fast, constantly iterating in a startup environment
Your brain only releases dopamine when you're building
You debug from first principles
Clear communicator across mechanical, electrical, optical, and software teams
Self-directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told
Why Join Aurelius Systems?
Build more in 1 month than most engineers build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work goes downrange, not into a filing cabinet.
Career velocity is real. Erick Brito went from Founding Robotics Engineer to Lead in 12 months. At ~10 engineers, there are no layers between you and impact, or between you and your next title.
Work on a problem that actually matters. Small, cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer. Think infinite magazine, cost-per-shot near zero, scalable to every base, border, facility, truck, and piece of infrastructure.
Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built. You'll be in the room with the people reshaping how America builds weapons.
How We Work:
Core hours are Monday–Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up; nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship.
When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show. We go hard when the mission demands it, and we recover when it doesn't.
Benefits:
Competitive salary + equity
United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage
Flexible 18 days PTO + 5 sick days
Travel to field test events and range days
Covered daily lunches and office snacks + drinks
E-bike / scooter stipend (up to $500)
Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work
Export Control Notice:
This role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require \"U.S. Person\" status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a \"U.S. Person\": (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).
Don't Check Every Box?
Apply anyway. The filter is simple: walk us through a controller you tuned on real hardware where the sim said one thing and reality said another. If you have that story, we want to talk regardless of what your resume says.
","descriptionPlain":"Who We Are:\n\nAurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.\n\nWe're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.\n\nOur namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing.\n\nThat's how we operate — small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.\n\nIn addition to our San Francisco lab, we’ve opened a Detroit manufacturing hub and we field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.\n\nThe Role & Your Impact:\n\nYou'll own the precision motion stack, full stop.\n\nThe critical gap we're hiring for is a hands-on robotics controls engineer who can iterate fast on real hardware. Someone who can take a model, get it on the hardware, characterize what's actually happening, and tighten the loop. You think in Bode plots and step responses.\n\nThis is a senior IC role on the controls side. You'll own the architecture and tuning of the precision pointing and tracking control loops, the state estimation behind them, and the closed loop integration with the tracker. \n\nWhat You'll Own:\n\n - Architecture and tuning of the precision pointing and tracking control loops\n\n - Closed loop tracking from sensor input through actuator command at hundreds of Hz\n\n - State estimation across IMU, encoder, and vision based feedback (Kalman filters, complementary filters, sensor fusion)\n\n - System identification and modeling of the gimbal, mount, and actuator dynamics\n\n - Actuator tuning, gain scheduling, and compensation for nonlinearities (backlash, friction, saturation)\n\n - Resonance characterization, notch filtering, and structural compensation\n\n - Simulation infrastructure for controls development \n\n - Hardware-in-the-loop test infrastructure for controls validation\n\n - Field characterization of the system against real targets at the range\n\n - Author controls documentation and tuning standards \n\nWhat We're Looking For:\n\n - 4+ years of experience in robotics\n\n - Strong knowledge of fundamentals: classical controls, state space, LQR, MPC\n\n - Proven simulation experience and a track record of managing the sim-to-real gap on actual hardware\n\n - Modern C++ for real time control implementation\n\n - Python or MATLAB/Simulink for modeling, system ID, and analysis\n\n - State estimation in practice (Kalman, EKF, UKF, complementary filters)\n\n - System identification and frequency domain tuning\n\n - Direct experience with motion control hardware — servo drives, brushless motors, encoders, IMUs\n\n - Comfortable working at the seam between mechanical, electrical, and software\n\n - Understanding of latency, jitter, and how they kill control loop performance\n\nNot a fit if: Your controls experience is purely simulation, your real world tuning amounts to changing PID gains in a UI, or you've never had to characterize a resonance, model an actuator, or fight a sensor that lies to you. We need someone who's tuned hardware that fought back.\n\nNice-to-Haves:\n\n - Advanced MPC — nonlinear MPC, robust MPC, or real-time NMPC on resource constrained hardware\n\n - Gimbal, beam director, or precision pointing system experience\n\n - Aerospace, defense, or directed energy controls background\n\n - Adaptive or robust control implementation in production\n\n - Vision-in-the-loop control (visual servoing, image-based tracking)\n\n - Hardware-in-the-loop simulation experience\n\n - High bandwidth sensor pipelines (cameras, radar, IMUs at high rate)\n\n - Prior work on a system that had to hit a moving target\n\nEducation:\n\nMS in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or related field is the sweet spot. BS with strong hands-on robotics experience or PhD with a real shipping record both welcome.\n\nHow You Operate:\n\n - Extreme bias for action. You'd rather tune on hardware tomorrow than model it for a month\n\n - Rigorous testing mindset. You characterize your own loops before the field does\n\n - Comfortable with ambiguity and fast, constantly iterating in a startup environment\n\n - Your brain only releases dopamine when you're building\n\n - You debug from first principles \n\n - Clear communicator across mechanical, electrical, optical, and software teams\n\n - Self-directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told\n\nWhy Join Aurelius Systems?\n\n - Build more in 1 month than most engineers build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work goes downrange, not into a filing cabinet.\n\n - Career velocity is real. Erick Brito went from Founding Robotics Engineer to Lead in 12 months. At ~10 engineers, there are no layers between you and impact, or between you and your next title.\n\n - Work on a problem that actually matters. Small, cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer. Think infinite magazine, cost-per-shot near zero, scalable to every base, border, facility, truck, and piece of infrastructure.\n\n - Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built. You'll be in the room with the people reshaping how America builds weapons.\n\nHow We Work:\n\nCore hours are Monday–Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up; nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship.\n\nWhen the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show. We go hard when the mission demands it, and we recover when it doesn't.\n\nBenefits:\n\n - Competitive salary + equity\n\n - United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage\n\n - Flexible 18 days PTO + 5 sick days\n\n - Travel to field test events and range days\n\n - Covered daily lunches and office snacks + drinks\n\n - E-bike / scooter stipend (up to $500)\n\n - Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work\n\nExport Control Notice:\n\nThis role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require \"U.S. Person\" status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a \"U.S. Person\": (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).\n\nDon't Check Every Box?\n\nApply anyway. The filter is simple: walk us through a controller you tuned on real hardware where the sim said one thing and reality said another. If you have that story, we want to talk regardless of what your resume says."},{"id":"cac8b311-d0fe-4675-84ec-1a0d80fc7ffb","title":"Principal Robotics Software Engineer","department":"Engineering","team":"Robotics Software","employmentType":"FullTime","location":"San Francisco","secondaryLocations":[],"publishedAt":"2026-05-04T19:09:15.237+00:00","isListed":true,"isRemote":false,"workplaceType":"OnSite","address":{"postalAddress":{"addressRegion":"California","addressCountry":"United States","addressLocality":"San Francisco"}},"jobUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/cac8b311-d0fe-4675-84ec-1a0d80fc7ffb","applyUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/cac8b311-d0fe-4675-84ec-1a0d80fc7ffb/application","descriptionHtml":"Who We Are:
Aurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.
We're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.
Our namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate — small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.
In addition to our San Francisco lab, we’ve opened a Detroit manufacturing hub and we field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.
The Role and Your Impact:
We need a Principal Robotics Software Engineer to lead architecture across the Archimedes robotics stack: tracking, control, autonomy, and the infrastructure that lets us ship. You'll partner directly with our CTO and engineering leadership and own the path from prototype code to deployed software. You're the senior IC who's done this at scale, still writes the critical code, and knows how to take a research-y stack into a deployable product without breaking it.
What You'll Own:
Architecture and technical direction for the whole robotics software stack
Performance and timing architecture: threading, process model and latency budgets across the system
Formal release process, packaging and deployment hygiene for fielded systems
CI/CD infrastructure and scaling the software org alongside QA
Mentorship of the robotics SWE team and the bar for code quality
Cross-functional alignment across controls, embedded, EE and optics
The path from prototype code to fielded software in customer hands
What We're Looking For:
10+ years shipping robotics or real-time, hardware-facing software
Deep production C++ and real-time systems experience; still hands-on
Senior IC track record at companies that shipped to customers or operators
Track record building and operating CI/CD for robotics or hardware-in-the-loop
Experience taking software through formal release, packaging and deployment to end users
Where you probably come from: Senior or principal IC at robotics companies that shipped, defense robotics, AV, aerospace, or F1 and high-performance automotive programs that put software in front of operators.
We want to talk if: You've taken software from \"works on the dev's machine\" to \"works in the field for a customer.\" You know the difference between a prototype that demos and a release that survives.
Not a fit if: Your background is web, backend or full stack, you're a researcher who hasn't shipped, you're a people manager without recent IC chops, or your robotics experience is benchmark-only.
Nice to Haves:
ROS2, and the judgment to know when not to use it
Rust or other systems languages
Sensor fusion or perception background
Defense or safety-critical software release experience
Education: BS, MS or PhD in CS, Robotics, EE or equivalent. Track record matters more than degree.
How You Operate:
Extreme bias for action. You ship working code on real hardware, not slideware
You debug from first principles, not intuition alone
Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment
Clear communicator across software, hardware, and operator-facing surfaces
Self directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told
Why Join Aurelius Systems:
Build more in 1 month than most engineers build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work goes downrange, not into a filing cabinet.
Career velocity is real. With no middle management, there are no layers between you and impact.
Work on a problem that actually matters. Small cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer — infinite magazine, near zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.
Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.
How We Work:
Core hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up — nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show.
Benefits:
Competitive salary and equity
United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage
Flexible 18 days PTO plus 5 sick days
Travel to field test events and range days
Covered daily lunches and office snacks and drinks
E-bike and scooter stipend up to $500
Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work
Export Control Notice:
This role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require U.S. Person status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a U.S. Person: (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).
","descriptionPlain":"Who We Are:\n\nAurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.\n\nWe're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.\n\nOur namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate — small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.\n\nIn addition to our San Francisco lab, we’ve opened a Detroit manufacturing hub and we field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.\n\nThe Role and Your Impact:\n\nWe need a Principal Robotics Software Engineer to lead architecture across the Archimedes robotics stack: tracking, control, autonomy, and the infrastructure that lets us ship. You'll partner directly with our CTO and engineering leadership and own the path from prototype code to deployed software. You're the senior IC who's done this at scale, still writes the critical code, and knows how to take a research-y stack into a deployable product without breaking it.\n\nWhat You'll Own:\n\n - Architecture and technical direction for the whole robotics software stack\n\n - Performance and timing architecture: threading, process model and latency budgets across the system\n\n - Formal release process, packaging and deployment hygiene for fielded systems\n\n - CI/CD infrastructure and scaling the software org alongside QA\n\n - Mentorship of the robotics SWE team and the bar for code quality\n\n - Cross-functional alignment across controls, embedded, EE and optics\n\n - The path from prototype code to fielded software in customer hands\n\nWhat We're Looking For:\n\n - 10+ years shipping robotics or real-time, hardware-facing software\n\n - Deep production C++ and real-time systems experience; still hands-on\n\n - Senior IC track record at companies that shipped to customers or operators\n\n - Track record building and operating CI/CD for robotics or hardware-in-the-loop\n\n - Experience taking software through formal release, packaging and deployment to end users\n\nWhere you probably come from: Senior or principal IC at robotics companies that shipped, defense robotics, AV, aerospace, or F1 and high-performance automotive programs that put software in front of operators.\n\nWe want to talk if: You've taken software from \"works on the dev's machine\" to \"works in the field for a customer.\" You know the difference between a prototype that demos and a release that survives.\n\nNot a fit if: Your background is web, backend or full stack, you're a researcher who hasn't shipped, you're a people manager without recent IC chops, or your robotics experience is benchmark-only.\n\nNice to Haves:\n\n - ROS2, and the judgment to know when not to use it\n\n - Rust or other systems languages\n\n - Sensor fusion or perception background\n\n - Defense or safety-critical software release experience\n\nEducation: BS, MS or PhD in CS, Robotics, EE or equivalent. Track record matters more than degree.\n\nHow You Operate:\n\n - Extreme bias for action. You ship working code on real hardware, not slideware\n\n - You debug from first principles, not intuition alone\n\n - Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment\n\n - Clear communicator across software, hardware, and operator-facing surfaces\n\n - Self directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told\n\nWhy Join Aurelius Systems:\n\n - Build more in 1 month than most engineers build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work goes downrange, not into a filing cabinet.\n\n - Career velocity is real. With no middle management, there are no layers between you and impact.\n\n - Work on a problem that actually matters. Small cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer — infinite magazine, near zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.\n\n - Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.\n\nHow We Work:\n\nCore hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up — nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show.\n\nBenefits:\n\n - Competitive salary and equity\n\n - United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage\n\n - Flexible 18 days PTO plus 5 sick days\n\n - Travel to field test events and range days\n\n - Covered daily lunches and office snacks and drinks\n\n - E-bike and scooter stipend up to $500\n\n - Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work\n\nExport Control Notice:\n\nThis role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require U.S. Person status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a U.S. Person: (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)."},{"id":"75e91aac-ff9c-4dc4-8771-c1a1149d44b8","title":"Sr. ML Engineer, Perception","department":"Engineering","team":"Perception & ML","employmentType":"FullTime","location":"San Francisco","secondaryLocations":[],"publishedAt":"2026-05-06T04:09:04.957+00:00","isListed":true,"isRemote":false,"workplaceType":"OnSite","address":{"postalAddress":{"addressRegion":"California","addressCountry":"United States","addressLocality":"San Francisco"}},"jobUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/75e91aac-ff9c-4dc4-8771-c1a1149d44b8","applyUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/75e91aac-ff9c-4dc4-8771-c1a1149d44b8/application","descriptionHtml":"Who We Are:
Aurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.
We're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.
Our namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate — small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.
In addition to our San Francisco lab, we’ve opened a Detroit manufacturing hub and we field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.
The Role and Your Impact:
We need a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to lead the perception stack for Archimedes — detection, tracking, classification, and sensor fusion across the targeting chain. You're the seasoned engineer who's shipped perception in something that had to work outside a benchmark. You'll partner directly with our CTO and the robotics software team, and own perception as a domain.
What You'll Own:
Perception architecture across detection, tracking, classification, and sensor fusion
ML model development, training pipelines, and on-device deployment
Multi-sensor fusion across EO/IR and other sensors as relevant to the targeting chain
Real-time performance optimization on embedded targets
Mentorship of perception engineers as the team grows
Direct partnership with controls, robotics SWE, and hardware on what's actually achievable
What We're Looking For:
5+ years building and shipping perception systems on real hardware
Strong Python and C++ with deep ML engineering experience
Computer vision, tracking, and detection in real-time, real-world conditions
On-device deployment experience using TensorRT, ONNX, or equivalent
Track record optimizing perception for embedded compute and latency budgets
Where you probably come from: Perception roles at defense companies, autonomy, perception-heavy robotics, or aerospace programs that put perception in front of real targets.
We want to talk if: You've shipped a perception system that ran on real hardware against real targets. You know the gap between paper SOTA and what survives field conditions.
Not a fit if: Your background is research only without deployment, you're a new grad (we'll have a junior role later), or your CV experience is offline batch processing only.
Nice to Haves:
Counter-UAS or aerial target tracking experience
Radar or RF perception
Classified program experience
Sensor fusion in adversarial or denied environments
Education:
BS, MS, or PhD in CS, EE, Robotics, or equivalent. Track record matters more than degree.
How You Operate:
Extreme bias for action. You ship working perception on real hardware, not slideware
You debug from first principles, not intuition alone
Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment
Clear communicator across software, hardware, and operator-facing surfaces
Self directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told
Why Join Aurelius Systems?
Build more in 1 month than most engineers build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work goes downrange, not into a filing cabinet.
Career velocity is real. At ~10 engineers, there are no layers between you and impact.
Work on a problem that actually matters. Small cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer — infinite magazine, near zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.
Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.
How We Work:
Core hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up — nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show.
Benefits:
Competitive salary + equity
United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage
Flexible 18 days PTO + 5 sick days
Travel to field test events and range days
Covered daily lunches and office snacks + drinks
E-bike / scooter stipend ( Up to $500)
Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work
Export Control Notice:
This role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require \"U.S. Person\" status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a \"U.S. Person\": (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).
","descriptionPlain":"Who We Are:\n\nAurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.\n\nWe're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.\n\nOur namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate — small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.\n\nIn addition to our San Francisco lab, we’ve opened a Detroit manufacturing hub and we field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.\n\nThe Role and Your Impact:\n\nWe need a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to lead the perception stack for Archimedes — detection, tracking, classification, and sensor fusion across the targeting chain. You're the seasoned engineer who's shipped perception in something that had to work outside a benchmark. You'll partner directly with our CTO and the robotics software team, and own perception as a domain.\n\nWhat You'll Own:\n\n - Perception architecture across detection, tracking, classification, and sensor fusion\n\n - ML model development, training pipelines, and on-device deployment\n\n - Multi-sensor fusion across EO/IR and other sensors as relevant to the targeting chain\n\n - Real-time performance optimization on embedded targets\n\n - Mentorship of perception engineers as the team grows\n\n - Direct partnership with controls, robotics SWE, and hardware on what's actually achievable\n\nWhat We're Looking For:\n\n - 5+ years building and shipping perception systems on real hardware\n\n - Strong Python and C++ with deep ML engineering experience\n\n - Computer vision, tracking, and detection in real-time, real-world conditions\n\n - On-device deployment experience using TensorRT, ONNX, or equivalent\n\n - Track record optimizing perception for embedded compute and latency budgets\n\nWhere you probably come from: Perception roles at defense companies, autonomy, perception-heavy robotics, or aerospace programs that put perception in front of real targets.\n\nWe want to talk if: You've shipped a perception system that ran on real hardware against real targets. You know the gap between paper SOTA and what survives field conditions.\n\nNot a fit if: Your background is research only without deployment, you're a new grad (we'll have a junior role later), or your CV experience is offline batch processing only.\n\nNice to Haves:\n\n - Counter-UAS or aerial target tracking experience\n\n - Radar or RF perception\n\n - Classified program experience\n\n - Sensor fusion in adversarial or denied environments\n\nEducation:\n\n - BS, MS, or PhD in CS, EE, Robotics, or equivalent. Track record matters more than degree.\n\nHow You Operate:\n\n - Extreme bias for action. You ship working perception on real hardware, not slideware\n\n - You debug from first principles, not intuition alone\n\n - Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment\n\n - Clear communicator across software, hardware, and operator-facing surfaces\n\n - Self directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told\n\nWhy Join Aurelius Systems?\n\n - Build more in 1 month than most engineers build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work goes downrange, not into a filing cabinet.\n\n - Career velocity is real. At ~10 engineers, there are no layers between you and impact.\n\n - Work on a problem that actually matters. Small cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer — infinite magazine, near zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.\n\n - Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.\n\nHow We Work:\n\nCore hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up — nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show.\n\nBenefits:\n\n - Competitive salary + equity\n\n - United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage\n\n - Flexible 18 days PTO + 5 sick days\n\n - Travel to field test events and range days\n\n - Covered daily lunches and office snacks + drinks\n\n - E-bike / scooter stipend ( Up to $500)\n\n - Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work\n\nExport Control Notice:\n\nThis role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require \"U.S. Person\" status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a \"U.S. Person\": (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)."},{"id":"e0825d96-9910-45a0-ae0e-ecfc7ecfe5c6","title":"Perception Engineer","department":"Engineering","team":"Perception & ML","employmentType":"FullTime","location":"San Francisco","secondaryLocations":[],"publishedAt":"2026-08-07T02:36:36.264+00:00","isListed":true,"isRemote":false,"workplaceType":"OnSite","address":{"postalAddress":{"addressRegion":"California","addressCountry":"United States","addressLocality":"San Francisco"}},"jobUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/e0825d96-9910-45a0-ae0e-ecfc7ecfe5c6","applyUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/e0825d96-9910-45a0-ae0e-ecfc7ecfe5c6/application","descriptionHtml":"Who We Are:
Aurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.
We're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.
Our namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate — small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.
In addition to our San Francisco lab, we’ve opened a Detroit manufacturing hub and we field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.
The Role and Your Impact:
We are seeking a skilled Perception Engineer to join our software team and work on end‑to‑end perception and sensor‑fusion stack. You will develop, train, and deploy vision and sensor based models; manage data pipelines; and enable real‑time detection and tracking for our laser‑based defense system. This role bridges data science, software engineering, and robotics to deliver reliable, high‑throughput perception performance on edge hardware.
What You'll Own:
Design, train, validate and fine-tune machine‑learning and deep‑learning models (e.g., YOLO, RT-DETR, CNNs) for object detection, classification, and segmentation.
Integrate and fuse data from multi‑modal sensors (RGB, thermal, LiDAR/ToF, IMU, encoders) to produce robust, real‑time Regions of Interest (ROIs).
Research, implement, and as-needed develop high and low-level image-processing techniques, such as deconvolution, low SNR detection, and motion-isolation techniques.
Collaborate with hardware teams to integrate and troubleshoot sensors (global‑shutter and rolling‑shutter cameras, thermal imagers, LiDAR/ToF modules, IMUs) over GigE Vision, USB3 Vision, CAN, SPI, and I²C protocols; develop and debug embedded firmware in C/C++ (or Rust) for microcontrollers (STM32, NXP, TI) and FPGAs using VHDL/Verilog within RTOS environments (FreeRTOS, Zephyr).
Build scalable data ingestion, labeling, augmentation, and storage pipelines (simulated and field data) ensuring 100k+ labeled frames accuracy.
Optimize inference frameworks for edge deployment (GPU/FPGA), achieving ≥500 Hz end‑to‑end throughput.
Develop dashboards and telemetry for drift analysis, hardware health monitoring, performance metrics, and automated retraining triggers.
Author clear technical docs; mentor junior engineers on best practices in vision, sensor‑fusion, and embedded firmware engineering.
Determines development needs by directly analyzing technical and physical limitations of our goals.
What We're Looking For:
2–6+ years in computer vision, sensor fusion, or robotics perception roles
Strong C++ with deep ML engineering experience
Hands‑on with ML frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch) and real‑time inference engines (TensorRT, OpenVINO)
Computer vision, tracking, and detection in real-time, real-world conditions
Familiarity with ROS2, Docker, and CI/CD for ML pipelines
Experience with multi‑sensor calibration and data synchronization
Where you probably come from:Perception roles at defense companies, autonomous vehicle programs, robotics platforms, or aerospace programs that deploy perception against real targets.
We want to talk if: You've shipped a perception system that ran on real hardware against real targets. You know the gap between paper SOTA and what survives field conditions.
Not a fit if: Your background is research only without deployment, or your CV experience is offline batch processing only.
Nice to Haves:
Edge‑AI optimization (quantization, pruning)
Experience with FPGA or embedded GPU platforms
Background in defense or safety‑critical systems
Familiarity with cybersecurity guidelines and secure coding practices
Education:
BS, MS, or PhD in CS, EE, Robotics, or equivalent. Track record matters more than degree.
How You Operate:
Extreme bias for action. You ship working perception on real hardware, not slideware
You debug from first principles, not intuition alone
Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment
Clear communicator across software, hardware, and operator-facing surfaces
Self directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told
Why Join Aurelius Systems?
Build more in 1 month than most engineers build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work goes downrange, not into a filing cabinet.
Career velocity is real. At ~10 engineers, there are no layers between you and impact.
Work on a problem that actually matters. Small cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer — infinite magazine, near zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.
Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.
How We Work:
Core hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up — nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show.
Benefits:
Competitive salary + equity
United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage
Flexible 18 days PTO + 5 sick days
Travel to field test events and range days
Covered daily lunches and office snacks + drinks
E-bike / scooter stipend ( Up to $500)
Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work
Export Control Notice:
This role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require \"U.S. Person\" status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a \"U.S. Person\": (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).
","descriptionPlain":"Who We Are:\n\nAurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.\n\nWe're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.\n\nOur namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate — small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.\n\nIn addition to our San Francisco lab, we’ve opened a Detroit manufacturing hub and we field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.\n\nThe Role and Your Impact:\n\nWe are seeking a skilled Perception Engineer to join our software team and work on end‑to‑end perception and sensor‑fusion stack. You will develop, train, and deploy vision and sensor based models; manage data pipelines; and enable real‑time detection and tracking for our laser‑based defense system. This role bridges data science, software engineering, and robotics to deliver reliable, high‑throughput perception performance on edge hardware.\n\nWhat You'll Own:\n\n - Design, train, validate and fine-tune machine‑learning and deep‑learning models (e.g., YOLO, RT-DETR, CNNs) for object detection, classification, and segmentation.\n\n - Integrate and fuse data from multi‑modal sensors (RGB, thermal, LiDAR/ToF, IMU, encoders) to produce robust, real‑time Regions of Interest (ROIs).\n\n - Research, implement, and as-needed develop high and low-level image-processing techniques, such as deconvolution, low SNR detection, and motion-isolation techniques.\n\n - Collaborate with hardware teams to integrate and troubleshoot sensors (global‑shutter and rolling‑shutter cameras, thermal imagers, LiDAR/ToF modules, IMUs) over GigE Vision, USB3 Vision, CAN, SPI, and I²C protocols; develop and debug embedded firmware in C/C++ (or Rust) for microcontrollers (STM32, NXP, TI) and FPGAs using VHDL/Verilog within RTOS environments (FreeRTOS, Zephyr).\n\n - Build scalable data ingestion, labeling, augmentation, and storage pipelines (simulated and field data) ensuring 100k+ labeled frames accuracy.\n\n - Optimize inference frameworks for edge deployment (GPU/FPGA), achieving ≥500 Hz end‑to‑end throughput.\n\n - Develop dashboards and telemetry for drift analysis, hardware health monitoring, performance metrics, and automated retraining triggers.\n\n - Author clear technical docs; mentor junior engineers on best practices in vision, sensor‑fusion, and embedded firmware engineering.\n\n - Determines development needs by directly analyzing technical and physical limitations of our goals.\n\nWhat We're Looking For:\n\n - 2–6+ years in computer vision, sensor fusion, or robotics perception roles\n\n - Strong C++ with deep ML engineering experience\n\n - Hands‑on with ML frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch) and real‑time inference engines (TensorRT, OpenVINO)\n\n - Computer vision, tracking, and detection in real-time, real-world conditions\n\n - Familiarity with ROS2, Docker, and CI/CD for ML pipelines\n\n - Experience with multi‑sensor calibration and data synchronization\n\nWhere you probably come from:Perception roles at defense companies, autonomous vehicle programs, robotics platforms, or aerospace programs that deploy perception against real targets.\n\nWe want to talk if: You've shipped a perception system that ran on real hardware against real targets. You know the gap between paper SOTA and what survives field conditions.\n\nNot a fit if: Your background is research only without deployment, or your CV experience is offline batch processing only.\n\nNice to Haves:\n\n - Edge‑AI optimization (quantization, pruning)\n\n - Experience with FPGA or embedded GPU platforms\n\n - Background in defense or safety‑critical systems\n\n - Familiarity with cybersecurity guidelines and secure coding practices\n\nEducation:\n\n - BS, MS, or PhD in CS, EE, Robotics, or equivalent. Track record matters more than degree.\n\nHow You Operate:\n\n - Extreme bias for action. You ship working perception on real hardware, not slideware\n\n - You debug from first principles, not intuition alone\n\n - Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment\n\n - Clear communicator across software, hardware, and operator-facing surfaces\n\n - Self directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told\n\nWhy Join Aurelius Systems?\n\n - Build more in 1 month than most engineers build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work goes downrange, not into a filing cabinet.\n\n - Career velocity is real. At ~10 engineers, there are no layers between you and impact.\n\n - Work on a problem that actually matters. Small cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer — infinite magazine, near zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.\n\n - Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.\n\nHow We Work:\n\nCore hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up — nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show.\n\nBenefits:\n\n - Competitive salary + equity\n\n - United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage\n\n - Flexible 18 days PTO + 5 sick days\n\n - Travel to field test events and range days\n\n - Covered daily lunches and office snacks + drinks\n\n - E-bike / scooter stipend ( Up to $500)\n\n - Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work\n\nExport Control Notice:\n\nThis role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require \"U.S. Person\" status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a \"U.S. Person\": (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)."},{"id":"54977858-393b-46ad-a7fa-93053854ad80","title":"Executive Assistant","department":"G&A","team":"G&A","employmentType":"FullTime","location":"San Francisco","secondaryLocations":[],"publishedAt":"2026-09-29T22:35:44.844+00:00","isListed":true,"isRemote":false,"workplaceType":"OnSite","address":{"postalAddress":{"addressRegion":"California","addressCountry":"United States","addressLocality":"San Francisco"}},"jobUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/54977858-393b-46ad-a7fa-93053854ad80","applyUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/54977858-393b-46ad-a7fa-93053854ad80/application","descriptionHtml":"Aurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.
We're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.
Our namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate, small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.
In addition to our San Francisco lab, we've opened a Detroit manufacturing hub and we field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.
Aurelius Systems is hiring an Executive Assistant to work directly alongside our founders and leadership team, owning the systems and coordination that make the company move faster.
You’ll bring structure to ambiguity, close loops quickly, and become the person people trust to just handle it.
This is not a pure Executive Assistant role. It includes scheduling and travel, but goes beyond calendaring into internal systems, documentation, vendor coordination, office operations, and high-priority cross-functional work that does not sit neatly with any one team.
Where our Operations Specialist owns the hardware floor and physical operations, this role owns the software, systems, and operating rhythm of the company. Early on, the two roles will cover for each other. Over the next 6–12 months, they will diverge as we scale.
What You'll Own:
Executive and team scheduling, calendaring, and meeting coordination, including support for the CEO and CTO
Travel booking, hotel coordination, and logistics for team travel, demos, offsites, and visits
Vendor coordination, renewals, contracts, and business-side office administration
Internal documentation, trackers, and knowledge bases that stay current and usable
Internal tools and SaaS administration, including provisioning, access, and renewals
Visitor coordination, NDAs, scheduling, and site-visit logistics
Office coordination and onboarding logistics as the company scales
Special projects, follow-through, and high-priority operational work that needs a clear owner
What We're Looking For:
2–5 years of experience in executive operations, business operations, founder’s office, executive support, chief-of-staff-adjacent work, consulting, banking, or another high-output generalist role
Exceptional organizational ability and comfort managing many threads at once
Strong judgment and the ability to turn a vague problem into a clear plan
Bias toward simple systems that work now, rather than overbuilt process or enterprise tooling
Clear, direct communication and the ability to work cleanly across leadership, teammates, and vendors
High trust, strong follow-through, and comfort handling sensitive information
Comfort operating in a fast-moving startup where process is still being built
Where you probably come from: A founder's associate or BizOps seat at an early-stage startup, consulting or banking where you learned to structure problems fast, or a military admin or personnel role where you ran the unit's systems and kept everything tight.
We want to talk if: You're the person everyone already comes to when they need something solved, scheduled, or figured out. You see a broken process and fix it instead of filing a ticket. When a founder calls at 10pm because something urgent came up, you want to be the one who answers.
Not a fit if: You want a pure EA or calendar-only role, you're looking for hardware or facilities work (that's our Operations Specialist), you default to \"what software should we buy\" before \"what can I build in an hour,\" or you wait for written process before you'll act.
Experience at a startup or high-growth tech company
Familiarity with project management tools
Veteran with military admin, personnel, or S-1 background
Experience administering SaaS stacks and access controls
No degree required. Proof matters here.
Extreme bias for action. You'd rather solve it now than schedule a meeting about it.
You handle problems before they hit anyone's inbox.
Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment.
Clear communicator across the team, leadership, and vendors.
Self-directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told.
Build more in 1 month than most people build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work makes the whole team faster.
Work directly with the founders. At ~10 engineers, there are no layers between you and the people running the company.
Work on a problem that actually matters. Small, cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer with infinite magazine, near-zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.
Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.
We work Monday through Friday, 9 to 6, most Saturdays, and some evenings, although not constant. Supporting the whole company across engineering, operations, and leadership is the core of this role. We don't manufacture intensity for show; the pace is real because the work is real.
Competitive salary + equity
United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage
Flexible 18 days PTO + 5 sick days
Travel to field test events and range days
Covered daily lunches and office snacks + drinks
E-bike / scooter stipend (Up to $500)
Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work
This role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require \"U.S. Person\" status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a \"U.S. Person\": (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).
","descriptionPlain":"WHO WE ARE:\n\nAurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.\n\nWe're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.\n\nOur namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate, small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.\n\nIn addition to our San Francisco lab, we've opened a Detroit manufacturing hub and we field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.\n\n\n\n\nTHE ROLE AND IMPACT:\n\nAurelius Systems is hiring an Executive Assistant to work directly alongside our founders and leadership team, owning the systems and coordination that make the company move faster.\n\nYou’ll bring structure to ambiguity, close loops quickly, and become the person people trust to just handle it.\n\nThis is not a pure Executive Assistant role. It includes scheduling and travel, but goes beyond calendaring into internal systems, documentation, vendor coordination, office operations, and high-priority cross-functional work that does not sit neatly with any one team.\n\nWhere our Operations Specialist owns the hardware floor and physical operations, this role owns the software, systems, and operating rhythm of the company. Early on, the two roles will cover for each other. Over the next 6–12 months, they will diverge as we scale.\n\nWhat You'll Own:\n\n - Executive and team scheduling, calendaring, and meeting coordination, including support for the CEO and CTO\n\n - Travel booking, hotel coordination, and logistics for team travel, demos, offsites, and visits\n\n - Vendor coordination, renewals, contracts, and business-side office administration\n\n - Internal documentation, trackers, and knowledge bases that stay current and usable\n\n - Internal tools and SaaS administration, including provisioning, access, and renewals\n\n - Visitor coordination, NDAs, scheduling, and site-visit logistics\n\n - Office coordination and onboarding logistics as the company scales\n\n - Special projects, follow-through, and high-priority operational work that needs a clear owner\n\nWhat We're Looking For:\n\n - 2–5 years of experience in executive operations, business operations, founder’s office, executive support, chief-of-staff-adjacent work, consulting, banking, or another high-output generalist role\n\n - Exceptional organizational ability and comfort managing many threads at once\n\n - Strong judgment and the ability to turn a vague problem into a clear plan\n\n - Bias toward simple systems that work now, rather than overbuilt process or enterprise tooling\n\n - Clear, direct communication and the ability to work cleanly across leadership, teammates, and vendors\n\n - High trust, strong follow-through, and comfort handling sensitive information\n\n - Comfort operating in a fast-moving startup where process is still being built\n\nWhere you probably come from: A founder's associate or BizOps seat at an early-stage startup, consulting or banking where you learned to structure problems fast, or a military admin or personnel role where you ran the unit's systems and kept everything tight.\n\nWe want to talk if: You're the person everyone already comes to when they need something solved, scheduled, or figured out. You see a broken process and fix it instead of filing a ticket. When a founder calls at 10pm because something urgent came up, you want to be the one who answers.\n\nNot a fit if: You want a pure EA or calendar-only role, you're looking for hardware or facilities work (that's our Operations Specialist), you default to \"what software should we buy\" before \"what can I build in an hour,\" or you wait for written process before you'll act.\n\n \n\n\nNICE TO HAVES:\n\n - Experience at a startup or high-growth tech company\n\n - Familiarity with project management tools\n\n - Veteran with military admin, personnel, or S-1 background\n\n - Experience administering SaaS stacks and access controls\n\n \n\n\nEDUCATION: \n\nNo degree required. Proof matters here.\n\n \n\n\nHOW YOU OPERATE:\n\n - Extreme bias for action. You'd rather solve it now than schedule a meeting about it.\n\n - You handle problems before they hit anyone's inbox.\n\n - Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment.\n\n - Clear communicator across the team, leadership, and vendors.\n\n - Self-directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told.\n\n \n\n\nWHY JOIN AURELIUS SYSTEMS?\n\n \n\n - Build more in 1 month than most people build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work makes the whole team faster.\n\n - Work directly with the founders. At ~10 engineers, there are no layers between you and the people running the company.\n\n - Work on a problem that actually matters. Small, cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer with infinite magazine, near-zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.\n\n - Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.\n\n \n\n\nHOW WE WORK:\n\n \n\nWe work Monday through Friday, 9 to 6, most Saturdays, and some evenings, although not constant. Supporting the whole company across engineering, operations, and leadership is the core of this role. We don't manufacture intensity for show; the pace is real because the work is real.\n\n \n\n\nBENEFITS:\n\n \n\n - Competitive salary + equity\n\n - United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage\n\n - Flexible 18 days PTO + 5 sick days\n\n - Travel to field test events and range days\n\n - Covered daily lunches and office snacks + drinks\n\n - E-bike / scooter stipend (Up to $500)\n\n - Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work\n\n \n\n\nEXPORT CONTROL NOTICE:\n\n \n\nThis role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require \"U.S. Person\" status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a \"U.S. Person\": (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)."},{"id":"5edc80ed-d3c8-40e8-bfdb-6185d6ceec8b","title":"Principal Mechanical Engineer ","department":"Engineering","team":"Hardware","employmentType":"FullTime","location":"San Francisco","secondaryLocations":[],"publishedAt":"2026-08-07T02:35:38.118+00:00","isListed":true,"isRemote":false,"workplaceType":"OnSite","address":{"postalAddress":{"addressRegion":"California","addressCountry":"United States","addressLocality":"San Francisco"}},"jobUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/5edc80ed-d3c8-40e8-bfdb-6185d6ceec8b","applyUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/5edc80ed-d3c8-40e8-bfdb-6185d6ceec8b/application","descriptionHtml":"Who We Are:
Aurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.
We're a small team of engineers, former US military, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.
Our namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.
In addition to our San Francisco lab, we opened our Detroit manufacturing hub and field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.
The Role and Your Impact:
We need a Principal Mechanical Engineer to bring senior technical judgment across Archimedes hardware. You're a highly experienced builder who has taken systems the full way, from working prototype to hardware that ships and survives in the field, more than once. You know where systems break, where teams get stuck, and how to keep both moving.
You'll own mechanical architecture across the whole system, lead its integration with electrical, power, embedded and optics, and partner with the engineering leadership on architecture and roadmap.
What You'll Own:
Mechanical architecture across the full system and its integration with electrical, power, embedded, and optics
Technical decisions on the hardest problems, from concept through production readiness
Release and production process for hardware, with our Detroit manufacturing hub
Pattern recognition and technical review: surfacing risk early and catching what others miss
Hands-on execution when the problem needs your specific experience to solve fast
Design and manufacturing trades across cost, mass, reliability, schedule, and field performance
The technical bar for design reviews, documentation, and release standards
Mentorship by example. Engineers learn from watching you work, not from being managed by you
What We're Looking For:
10+ years designing and shipping complex hardware systems
Track record taking systems the full cycle from prototype through manufacturing and deployment, more than once
Senior IC or technical leadership background at hardware companies that actually shipped
Deep mechanical expertise plus real judgment in at least one of electrical, power electronics, or embedded
Systems that had to survive real-world conditions
Comfort being the technical anchor on a small team, not the manager of a large one
Where you probably come from: Defense hardware, aerospace, F1 and high-performance automotive, maritime, robotics hardware, or directed energy programs.
We want to talk if: You've been the person a hardware team leaned on to get a system from prototype to production, and you still like doing the hardest part yourself.
Not a fit if: You're a people manager without recent hands-on work, your experience is purely consumer, or you've spent your career on one narrow subcomponent.
Nice to Haves:
Directed energy, laser or high-power systems
Defense or aerospace program experience with MIL-STD or equivalent qualification
Founder or founding engineer background at a hardware company
Manufacturing depth: you've stood up production lines or worked closely with the manufacturers who do
Active security clearance or ability to obtain one
Education:
BS, MS or PhD in Mechanical, Aerospace or related field. What you've built matters more than where you went to school.
How You Operate:
Extreme bias for action. You'd rather build a prototype tomorrow than model it for a month
You characterize your own systems before the field does
Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment
You debug from first principles, not intuition alone
Clear communicator across mechanical, electrical, optical, and software teams
Self directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told
Why Join Aurelius Systems:
Build more in 1 month than most engineers build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work goes downrange, not into a filing cabinet.
Career velocity is real. At ~10 engineers, there are no layers between you and impact.
Work on a problem that actually matters. Small cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer — infinite magazine, near zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.
Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.
How We Work:
Core hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up — nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show.
Benefits:
Competitive salary and equity
United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage
Flexible 18 days PTO plus 5 sick days
Travel to field test events and range days
Covered daily lunches and office snacks and drinks
E-bike and scooter stipend up to $500
Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work
Export Control Notice:
This role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require U.S. Person status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a U.S. Person: (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).
","descriptionPlain":"Who We Are:\n\nAurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.\n\nWe're a small team of engineers, former US military, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.\n\nOur namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.\n\nIn addition to our San Francisco lab, we opened our Detroit manufacturing hub and field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.\n\nThe Role and Your Impact:\n\nWe need a Principal Mechanical Engineer to bring senior technical judgment across Archimedes hardware. You're a highly experienced builder who has taken systems the full way, from working prototype to hardware that ships and survives in the field, more than once. You know where systems break, where teams get stuck, and how to keep both moving. \n\nYou'll own mechanical architecture across the whole system, lead its integration with electrical, power, embedded and optics, and partner with the engineering leadership on architecture and roadmap.\n\nWhat You'll Own:\n\n - Mechanical architecture across the full system and its integration with electrical, power, embedded, and optics\n\n - Technical decisions on the hardest problems, from concept through production readiness\n\n - Release and production process for hardware, with our Detroit manufacturing hub\n\n - Pattern recognition and technical review: surfacing risk early and catching what others miss\n\n - Hands-on execution when the problem needs your specific experience to solve fast\n\n - Design and manufacturing trades across cost, mass, reliability, schedule, and field performance\n\n - The technical bar for design reviews, documentation, and release standards\n\n - Mentorship by example. Engineers learn from watching you work, not from being managed by you\n\nWhat We're Looking For:\n\n - 10+ years designing and shipping complex hardware systems\n\n - Track record taking systems the full cycle from prototype through manufacturing and deployment, more than once\n\n - Senior IC or technical leadership background at hardware companies that actually shipped\n\n - Deep mechanical expertise plus real judgment in at least one of electrical, power electronics, or embedded\n\n - Systems that had to survive real-world conditions\n\n - Comfort being the technical anchor on a small team, not the manager of a large one\n\nWhere you probably come from: Defense hardware, aerospace, F1 and high-performance automotive, maritime, robotics hardware, or directed energy programs.\n\nWe want to talk if: You've been the person a hardware team leaned on to get a system from prototype to production, and you still like doing the hardest part yourself.\n\nNot a fit if: You're a people manager without recent hands-on work, your experience is purely consumer, or you've spent your career on one narrow subcomponent.\n\nNice to Haves:\n\n - Directed energy, laser or high-power systems\n\n - Defense or aerospace program experience with MIL-STD or equivalent qualification\n\n - Founder or founding engineer background at a hardware company\n\n - Manufacturing depth: you've stood up production lines or worked closely with the manufacturers who do\n\n - Active security clearance or ability to obtain one\n\nEducation:\nBS, MS or PhD in Mechanical, Aerospace or related field. What you've built matters more than where you went to school.\n\nHow You Operate:\n\n - Extreme bias for action. You'd rather build a prototype tomorrow than model it for a month\n\n - You characterize your own systems before the field does\n\n - Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment\n\n - You debug from first principles, not intuition alone\n\n - Clear communicator across mechanical, electrical, optical, and software teams\n\n - Self directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told\n\nWhy Join Aurelius Systems:\n\n - Build more in 1 month than most engineers build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work goes downrange, not into a filing cabinet.\n\n - Career velocity is real. At ~10 engineers, there are no layers between you and impact.\n\n - Work on a problem that actually matters. Small cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer — infinite magazine, near zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.\n\n - Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.\n\nHow We Work:\n\nCore hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up — nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show.\n\nBenefits:\n\n - Competitive salary and equity\n\n - United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage\n\n - Flexible 18 days PTO plus 5 sick days\n\n - Travel to field test events and range days\n\n - Covered daily lunches and office snacks and drinks\n\n - E-bike and scooter stipend up to $500\n\n - Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work\n\nExport Control Notice:\n\nThis role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require U.S. Person status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a U.S. Person: (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)."},{"id":"a555155b-44cd-4f98-a255-b7d0ed8e7d48","title":"Sr. Mechanical Engineer ","department":"Engineering","team":"Hardware","employmentType":"FullTime","location":"San Francisco","secondaryLocations":[],"publishedAt":"2026-10-12T19:35:21.025+00:00","isListed":true,"isRemote":false,"workplaceType":"OnSite","address":{"postalAddress":{"addressRegion":"California","addressCountry":"United States","addressLocality":"San Francisco"}},"jobUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/a555155b-44cd-4f98-a255-b7d0ed8e7d48","applyUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/a555155b-44cd-4f98-a255-b7d0ed8e7d48/application","descriptionHtml":"Who We Are:
Aurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.
We're a small team of engineers, former US military, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.
Our namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.
In addition to our San Francisco lab, we opened our Detroit manufacturing hub and field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.
The Role and Your Impact:
We need a Senior Mechanical Engineer who owns major mechanical subsystems on Archimedes end to end and makes them survive the field. That means ruggedization of a fiber laser system against shock, vibration, moisture and environmental extremes, plus the structure, thermal management and precision packaging around the laser head and beam director. You'll work hands on from architecture through bench validation, field correlation and the production handoff to our Detroit manufacturing hub, alongside our Staff and Principal engineers.
What You'll Own:
Mechanical design of major subsystems: laser source and head enclosures, gimbal and beam director structure, mounts
Survivability to MIL-STD shock, vibration, humidity, dust and austere environments
Thermal management for high-power laser and electronics packaging
Precision and optomechanical packaging that holds alignment through shock and thermal cycles
FEA (static, modal, random vibration, shock response spectrum) and correlation to test
Test rigs, instrumentation and bench validation you build and run yourself
DFM and the handoff to manufacturing in Detroit
Design reviews and raising the bar for the junior ME team
What We're Looking For:
5+ years in mechanical engineering on ruggedized, field-deployable or high-performance systems
At least one subsystem you took from prototype to production
Strong FEA (ANSYS, Nastran, Abaqus or equivalent) and the bench work to back it up
Hands-on design to MIL-STD-810 or equivalent shock and vibration standards
Thermal design for high-power systems
Evidence you learn fast. You got effective in a new domain in months, not years
Where you probably come from: Defense hardware, airborne or ground vehicle systems, F1 and high-performance automotive, aerospace, maritime, ruggedized electronics, or directed energy and field-deployed sensor programs. Domain matters less than shipping hardware that had to survive.
We want to talk if: You've owned a system that had to survive shock, vibration and environmental extremes in a tight, deployable package, and you modeled it, built it, instrumented it and correlated it.
Not a fit if: You've only done commercial or consumer product design, your work is simulation-only with no bench validation, or you've spent years on one narrow subcomponent without seeing the system around it.
Nice to Haves:
Laser, directed energy or high-power hardware
Optical bench or precision instrument ruggedization
MIL-STD-461 EMI/EMC awareness for mechanical integration
Vehicle-mounted systems
Manufacturing ramp experience
Education: BS or MS in Mechanical, Aerospace or related field. What you've built matters more than where you went to school.
How You Operate:
Extreme bias for action. You'd rather build a prototype tomorrow than model it for a month
You characterize your own systems before the field does
Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment
You debug from first principles, not intuition alone
Clear communicator across mechanical, electrical, optical, and software teams
Self directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told
Why Join Aurelius Systems:
Build more in 1 month than most engineers build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work goes downrange, not into a filing cabinet.
Career velocity is real. At ~10 engineers, there are no layers between you and impact.
Work on a problem that actually matters. Small cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer — infinite magazine, near zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.
Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.
How We Work:
Core hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up — nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show.
Benefits:
Competitive salary and equity
United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage
Flexible 18 days PTO plus 5 sick days
Travel to field test events and range days
Covered daily lunches and office snacks and drinks
E-bike and scooter stipend up to $500
Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work
Export Control Notice:
This role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require U.S. Person status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a U.S. Person: (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).
","descriptionPlain":"Who We Are:\n\nAurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.\n\nWe're a small team of engineers, former US military, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.\n\nOur namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.\n\nIn addition to our San Francisco lab, we opened our Detroit manufacturing hub and field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.\n\nThe Role and Your Impact:\n\nWe need a Senior Mechanical Engineer who owns major mechanical subsystems on Archimedes end to end and makes them survive the field. That means ruggedization of a fiber laser system against shock, vibration, moisture and environmental extremes, plus the structure, thermal management and precision packaging around the laser head and beam director. You'll work hands on from architecture through bench validation, field correlation and the production handoff to our Detroit manufacturing hub, alongside our Staff and Principal engineers.\n\nWhat You'll Own:\n\n - Mechanical design of major subsystems: laser source and head enclosures, gimbal and beam director structure, mounts\n\n - Survivability to MIL-STD shock, vibration, humidity, dust and austere environments\n\n - Thermal management for high-power laser and electronics packaging\n\n - Precision and optomechanical packaging that holds alignment through shock and thermal cycles\n\n - FEA (static, modal, random vibration, shock response spectrum) and correlation to test\n\n - Test rigs, instrumentation and bench validation you build and run yourself\n\n - DFM and the handoff to manufacturing in Detroit\n\n - Design reviews and raising the bar for the junior ME team\n\nWhat We're Looking For:\n\n - 5+ years in mechanical engineering on ruggedized, field-deployable or high-performance systems\n\n - At least one subsystem you took from prototype to production\n\n - Strong FEA (ANSYS, Nastran, Abaqus or equivalent) and the bench work to back it up\n\n - Hands-on design to MIL-STD-810 or equivalent shock and vibration standards\n\n - Thermal design for high-power systems\n\n - Evidence you learn fast. You got effective in a new domain in months, not years\n\nWhere you probably come from: Defense hardware, airborne or ground vehicle systems, F1 and high-performance automotive, aerospace, maritime, ruggedized electronics, or directed energy and field-deployed sensor programs. Domain matters less than shipping hardware that had to survive.\n\nWe want to talk if: You've owned a system that had to survive shock, vibration and environmental extremes in a tight, deployable package, and you modeled it, built it, instrumented it and correlated it.\n\nNot a fit if: You've only done commercial or consumer product design, your work is simulation-only with no bench validation, or you've spent years on one narrow subcomponent without seeing the system around it.\n\nNice to Haves:\n\n - Laser, directed energy or high-power hardware\n\n - Optical bench or precision instrument ruggedization\n\n - MIL-STD-461 EMI/EMC awareness for mechanical integration\n\n - Vehicle-mounted systems\n\n - Manufacturing ramp experience\n\nEducation: BS or MS in Mechanical, Aerospace or related field. What you've built matters more than where you went to school.\n\nHow You Operate:\n\n - Extreme bias for action. You'd rather build a prototype tomorrow than model it for a month\n\n - You characterize your own systems before the field does\n\n - Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment\n\n - You debug from first principles, not intuition alone\n\n - Clear communicator across mechanical, electrical, optical, and software teams\n\n - Self directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told\n\nWhy Join Aurelius Systems:\n\n - Build more in 1 month than most engineers build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work goes downrange, not into a filing cabinet.\n\n - Career velocity is real. At ~10 engineers, there are no layers between you and impact.\n\n - Work on a problem that actually matters. Small cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer — infinite magazine, near zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.\n\n - Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.\n\nHow We Work:\n\nCore hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up — nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show.\n\nBenefits:\n\n - Competitive salary and equity\n\n - United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage\n\n - Flexible 18 days PTO plus 5 sick days\n\n - Travel to field test events and range days\n\n - Covered daily lunches and office snacks and drinks\n\n - E-bike and scooter stipend up to $500\n\n - Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work\n\nExport Control Notice:\n\nThis role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require U.S. Person status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a U.S. Person: (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)."},{"id":"9fbd7250-d60d-4604-a1a5-81cacdc888ac","title":"Robotics Software Engineer ","department":"Engineering","team":"Robotics Software","employmentType":"FullTime","location":"San Francisco","secondaryLocations":[{"location":"Detroit","address":{"postalAddress":{"addressRegion":"Michigan","addressCountry":"United States","addressLocality":"Detroit"}}}],"publishedAt":"2026-10-12T20:31:01.404+00:00","isListed":true,"isRemote":false,"workplaceType":"OnSite","address":{"postalAddress":{"addressRegion":"California","addressCountry":"United States","addressLocality":"San Francisco"}},"jobUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/9fbd7250-d60d-4604-a1a5-81cacdc888ac","applyUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aureliussystems/9fbd7250-d60d-4604-a1a5-81cacdc888ac/application","descriptionHtml":"Who We Are:
Aurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.
We're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.
Our namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate, small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.
In addition to our San Francisco lab, we opened our Detroit manufacturing hub and field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.
The Role and Your Impact:
We need a Robotics Software Engineer who writes fast, correct C++ that runs on real hardware. You’ll work on the Archimedes stack alongside our Lead Software Engineer, taking raw sensor data and turning it into tracking, control and autonomy that has to work in real time. Performance and accuracy matter more than anything. Your scope grows as fast as you do; our Lead went from Founding Robotics Engineer to Lead in 12 months.
What You’ll Own:
Production C++ across the stack: sensor ingestion, tracking, control and autonomy
Working directly with drivers and raw sensor data, not pre-packaged inputs
Threading, process architecture and performance on the paths you own
Timing and latency analysis, and making the fixes it points to
Python tooling for testing, analysis and the range
Debugging on hardware at weekly field tests
What We’re Looking For:
2+ years writing production C++ that runs on real hardware or real-time systems
Comfort below the abstraction layer: threading, concurrency, memory, performance profiling
You implement, not just design. You’ve shipped code you wrote
Evidence you learn fast: you got effective in a new domain in months, not years
Where you probably come from: We’re domain agnostic. Robotics, AV, drones, aerospace, F1 or automotive, maritime, embedded systems, compilers, or low-level C++ game engine and 3D simulation work all fit. A robotics degree isn’t required; the robotics is learnable on the job.
We want to talk if: You’ve written C++ where latency or timing actually mattered and you measured it. Bonus if your projects touch motion planning, dynamics, trajectory optimization, or state estimation.
Not a fit if: You’re web, backend or full stack; your C++ is light and your real work is in Python; you’ve never had a full-time role; or you design systems but don’t implement them.
Nice to Haves:
ROS2 (a good signal, though we've moved past it)
Rust or other systems languages
Sensor integration and calibration
Real-time Linux
Education: BS, MS or PhD in CS, EE, Robotics or equivalent. Track record matters more than degree.
How You Operate:
Extreme bias for action. You'd rather build a prototype tomorrow than model it for a month
You characterize your own systems before the field does
Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment
You debug from first principles, not intuition alone
Clear communicator across mechanical, electrical, optical, and software teams
Self directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told
Why Join Aurelius Systems:
Build more in 1 month than most engineers build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work goes downrange, not into a filing cabinet.
Career velocity is real. With no middle management, there are no layers between you and impact.
Work on a problem that actually matters. Small cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer — infinite magazine, near zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.
Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.
How We Work:
Core hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up — nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show. If you've worked at SpaceX, against a mission-critical timeline, or on a racing team, you already know the rhythm.
Benefits:
Competitive salary and equity
United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage
Flexible 18 days PTO plus 5 sick days
Travel to field test events and range days
Covered daily lunches and office snacks and drinks
E-bike and scooter stipend up to $500
Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work
Export Control Notice:
This role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require U.S. Person status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a U.S. Person: (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).
","descriptionPlain":"Who We Are:\n\nAurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.\n\nWe're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.\n\nOur namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate, small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.\n\nIn addition to our San Francisco lab, we opened our Detroit manufacturing hub and field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.\n\nThe Role and Your Impact:\n We need a Robotics Software Engineer who writes fast, correct C++ that runs on real hardware. You’ll work on the Archimedes stack alongside our Lead Software Engineer, taking raw sensor data and turning it into tracking, control and autonomy that has to work in real time. Performance and accuracy matter more than anything. Your scope grows as fast as you do; our Lead went from Founding Robotics Engineer to Lead in 12 months.\n\nWhat You’ll Own:\n\n - Production C++ across the stack: sensor ingestion, tracking, control and autonomy\n\n - Working directly with drivers and raw sensor data, not pre-packaged inputs\n\n - Threading, process architecture and performance on the paths you own\n\n - Timing and latency analysis, and making the fixes it points to\n\n - Python tooling for testing, analysis and the range\n\n - Debugging on hardware at weekly field tests\n\nWhat We’re Looking For:\n\n - 2+ years writing production C++ that runs on real hardware or real-time systems\n\n - Comfort below the abstraction layer: threading, concurrency, memory, performance profiling\n\n - You implement, not just design. You’ve shipped code you wrote\n\n - Evidence you learn fast: you got effective in a new domain in months, not years\n\nWhere you probably come from: We’re domain agnostic. Robotics, AV, drones, aerospace, F1 or automotive, maritime, embedded systems, compilers, or low-level C++ game engine and 3D simulation work all fit. A robotics degree isn’t required; the robotics is learnable on the job.\n\nWe want to talk if: You’ve written C++ where latency or timing actually mattered and you measured it. Bonus if your projects touch motion planning, dynamics, trajectory optimization, or state estimation.\n\nNot a fit if: You’re web, backend or full stack; your C++ is light and your real work is in Python; you’ve never had a full-time role; or you design systems but don’t implement them.\n\nNice to Haves:\n\n - ROS2 (a good signal, though we've moved past it)\n\n - Rust or other systems languages\n\n - Sensor integration and calibration\n\n - Real-time Linux\n\nEducation: BS, MS or PhD in CS, EE, Robotics or equivalent. Track record matters more than degree.\n\nHow You Operate:\n\n - Extreme bias for action. You'd rather build a prototype tomorrow than model it for a month\n\n - You characterize your own systems before the field does\n\n - Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment\n\n - You debug from first principles, not intuition alone\n\n - Clear communicator across mechanical, electrical, optical, and software teams\n\n - Self directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told\n\nWhy Join Aurelius Systems:\n\n - Build more in 1 month than most engineers build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work goes downrange, not into a filing cabinet.\n\n - Career velocity is real. With no middle management, there are no layers between you and impact.\n\n - Work on a problem that actually matters. Small cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer — infinite magazine, near zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.\n\n - Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.\n\nHow We Work:\n\nCore hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 6. When we're sprinting toward a demo or field test, the team ramps up — nights, weekends, whatever it takes to ship. When the sprint lands, we ramp down. We don't manufacture intensity for show. If you've worked at SpaceX, against a mission-critical timeline, or on a racing team, you already know the rhythm.\n\nBenefits:\n\n - Competitive salary and equity\n\n - United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage\n\n - Flexible 18 days PTO plus 5 sick days\n\n - Travel to field test events and range days\n\n - Covered daily lunches and office snacks and drinks\n\n - E-bike and scooter stipend up to $500\n\n - Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work\n\nExport Control Notice:\n\nThis role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require U.S. Person status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a U.S. Person: (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)."}],"apiVersion":"1"}