Principal Software Engineer, Robotics

Full-Time

Chicago (Schaumburg), IL

Open

10/19/26

Close

11/8/2026

Salary

$150,000 - $210,000

About WingXpand

WingXpand is Expanding What's Possible™ with Autonomous Systems, building long-endurance, backpackable smart plane drones and robotics systems that support defense, public safety, disaster response, and commercial missions. Our platforms operate across air, ground, and maritime domains, integrating autonomy, AI-powered sensing, edge computing, and networked systems to deliver real-world intelligence and threat detection. We design, build, and deploy complete systems — hardware, software, and data — and we move fast. As WingXpand scales, we are seeking high performers to grow with our team. 

Job Description

Three robots, one autonomy stack. Our backpackable smart plane drone, unmanned ground vehicle, and unmanned surface vessel all run the same xPAIR robotic core, which means the autonomy you write has to hold up in the air, on the ground, and on the water — with payloads and detections moving between vehicles rather than being re-integrated for each one.

Most autonomy roles are one airframe in one domain. This isn't. We're looking for a Staff Robotics Software Engineer to own significant parts of that core.

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Hands-on individual contributor with an architecture mandate: you'll decide what belongs in the shared core and what stays vehicle-specific, where the open-source flight stack ends and our own code begins, and how the interfaces hold as we add systems. 

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Then you'll write the hard parts yourself. Code you write today is on a vehicle testing in the field tomorrow. Small team, no layer between you and the founders, no queue to get a decision made.

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If you've built autonomy for vehicles that actually fly or drive, you'll be at home here. We're also happy to talk to a strong engineer from an adjacent field that's excited to build robotics. If you've spent your career writing C++ for physical machines, whether that's industrial control, automotive, medical devices, or real-time embedded, let's connect.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and develop robotics and autonomy software across our unmanned aircraft, ground, and surface platforms.
• Implement and improve autonomous behaviors, navigation, and mission logic — including contingency behavior and what the vehicle does when the link drops or GPS goes away.
• Integrate new sensors, payloads, and perception capabilities into the robotics stack, end to end from driver to operator display.
• Develop software for collaborative robotic systems and multi-agent coordination: shared tasking, air-to-ground cueing, and multi-vehicle relay for persistent coverage.
• Make it run on the edge — embedded Linux, GPU inference on Jetson-class hardware, Docker, real-time detection with no backhaul.
• Keep it working when communications degrade: mesh networking, radio-silent operation, and graceful failure.
• Deploy, test, and validate software on real robotic platforms and on the supporting ground and infrastructure software.
• Work closely with hardware, avionics, electrical, mechanical, and systems engineers to integrate and optimize performance.
• Troubleshoot and debug across the software and hardware boundary, and drive up system reliability.
• Participate in testing, experimentation, and rapid iteration of new capabilities, and turn what you learn in the field into product changes.
• Contribute to system architecture and the long-term direction of our autonomy stack, and set technical direction on the areas you own.
• Raise the bar through code review, technical standards, and mentorship.

Qualifications

·      8+ years of professional software engineering experience with C/C++ in a Linux development environment.

·      Enough depth in state estimation, sensor fusion, and closed-loop control to write or replace an estimator, filter, or control loop when a problem calls for it.

·      Real ability to diagnose failures you can't reproduce on demand. A vehicle did something wrong once, in wind, at range, and what you have is telemetry and a flight log. Working out whether that was the code, a sensor, a coordinate frame, the airframe, or the physics is much of this job, and it's often harder than writing the software in the first place.

·      Willingness to build new autonomy behaviors and algorithms from scratch when the platform needs a capability it doesn't have yet. We'd rather you solve the root problem than accumulate parameter tweaks and special cases that work around it.

·      Experience testing, evaluating, and troubleshooting robotic systems on real hardware — reading flight logs and telemetry, reproducing failures, and working hardware-in-the-loop rather than only in simulation.

·      Able to get productive quickly in a large, complex codebase you didn't write.

·      Proven experience designing and implementing modular, scalable software.

·      A track record of owning a system through integration, test, and field deployment rather than handing off at merge.

·      Bachelor's in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace, Robotics, or a related field, or equivalent hands-on experience.

Desired Qualifications

• PX4 or ArduPilot experience, including MAVLink, flight log analysis, and autopilot configuration and tuning.
• ROS 2 at depth, including a clear view of where it belongs and where it doesn't.
• Edge compute and GPU inference on Jetson-class hardware, CUDA or TensorRT.
• Behavior trees or comparable mission-logic frameworks.
• Distributed messaging and operation over degraded or contested links, such as MANET datalinks.
• Autonomy in more than one domain: air plus ground, maritime, or subsea.
• Safety-critical or flight-critical software development.
• SITL and HITL simulation.
• Government program experience
• Master's or PhD in a relevant field.
• Drones you've built, flown, crashed, and fixed on your own time.

Benefits

Every full-time employee at WingXpand receives stock options. Equity is a core part of how we pay, not an afterthought, and early team members share directly in the company's growth as we scale. Additionally, we offer medical, dental, and vision coverage, a 401(k) retirement savings plan, and unlimited paid time off for vacation, illness, and personal needs, plus paid company holidays.

What Else You Need to Know

This role requires access to technology controlled under U.S. export regulations. Applicants must qualify as a U.S. Person as defined at 22 CFR 120.62, which includes U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, lawful permanent residents, and persons granted asylum or refugee status.

WingXpand is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.

Qualified individuals with disabilities and protected veterans are encouraged to apply. If you need a reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application or interview process, contact team@wingxpand.com and we'll arrange it.