Senior Software Engineer, Robotics and Flight Software

We are Jasper and Alessandro, the founders of Impact Drones (YC S26). Jasper (TU Delft aerospace MSc) has built drones for over a decade, including the Hannover Messe VTOL competition winner, and worked with special forces on the 2025 NATO Summit counter-drone plan; Alessandro (Columbia MSc) built the pipeline behind our 176M USD in signed LOIs.

We are hiring one of our first engineers, on-site in Los Angeles, to build the software that decides and launches an interceptor when a hostile drone comes for a data center, an airport or a power grid.

In March 2026, Iranian drones struck three AWS data centers in the UAE and Bahrain. Fiber-optic FPV drones cannot be jammed. The only thing that stops them is a physical intercept. That is what we build.

About Impact Drones
We sell Air Defense as a Service to civilian critical infrastructure. One container on site senses, decides and launches. It combines a sensor mast, our engagement software and 8 open launch bays built to our Open Launch Standard. The bays take SABLE, our jet interceptor, and third-party interceptors too. Interceptors change. The bay stays.

What you will own

• The engagement path in our container software: radar track, threat evaluation, the authority's two-step release, launch from a bay.
• Bay and launch control firmware with failsafes, and the datalink to SABLE in flight.
• Field testing at outdoor ranges, and setting the test schedule with Jasper.
• Your tools, and a say in who we hire next.

Your first 3 months

• Month one: your first bay firmware runs on the bench rig, failsafes included.
• Month two: the loop closes in simulation on your code: radar track, threat evaluation, two-step release, bay command.
• Month three: that loop runs on the real bay controller, then on live radar at an outdoor range.

What you bring

• Software you shipped onto real hardware that flew, not only in simulation.
• Strong C, C++ or Rust on embedded or real-time systems, plus Python.
• Field tests you ran yourself, and the fixes that came out of them.

Bonus points

• You fly FPV or build quads, and have worked in PX4, ArduPilot or Betaflight source.
• Counter-UAS, defense or aerospace experience.

Compensation

• Base salary: $120,000 to $170,000 per year.
• Equity: 0.5% to 1.0% in stock options, 4-year vesting with a 1-year cliff.

Where we work
On-site in Los Angeles, CA, with regular field testing at outdoor ranges.

How to apply
Apply here and answer the one question on the form: the hardest thing you built that flew, plus a link if you can share one (repo, video or flight log). We read every application ourselves.

Jasper and Alessandro

This role may involve technical data subject to U.S. export controls (ITAR and EAR). Applicants must be U.S. persons (including U.S. citizens and nationals, lawful permanent residents, refugees and asylees) or eligible for any required export authorization.

Impact Drones is an equal opportunity employer. We will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records in accordance with the California Fair Chance Act and, where they apply, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the City of Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance.