Staff Software Engineer (Autonomy) in London

UFORCE exists to make aggression unaffordable. Founded in Ukraine and headquartered in London, UFORCE is a defence-technology company with operations across Europe, the United States and Asia. UFORCE builds uncrewed vessels, ground robotics and aircraft, autonomy software, and the command-and-control layer that operates them together. Each platform is deployable on its own, and stronger as part of the system. Its product lines include the MAGURA family of uncrewed surface vessels, the NEMESIS family of strike platforms, the LIUT family of ground robotic platforms, and counter-UAS systems.

About the role

The Staff Software Engineer (Autonomy) will design, build, and operate software capabilities that improve the mission effectiveness and safety of uncrewed surface vehicles across the UFORCE C2/C4ISR stack. This role spans Perception Autonomy, Autonomy Behaviours—including collision avoidance (COLAV), target-based manoeuvring and engagement—and Swarm Intelligence. You will take cross-system initiatives from design and implementation through scenario-based verification, field trials, deployment, and iteration. The role requires strong software engineering and mathematical foundations, with an emphasis on autonomy that remains safe, observable, and useful in real operating conditions—including degraded sensors, different sea states, and GNSS- or RF-challenged environments.

What you’ll do

• Build production-grade capabilities across perception, autonomous behaviours, COLAV, and multi-USV coordination.
• Define measurable acceptance criteria for autonomy performance, safety, reliability, and operator trust.
• Validate perception and behaviours across day/night operations, different sea states, sensor degradation, and GNSS/RF-challenged conditions.
• Develop swarm capabilities such as task allocation, role assignment, formation control, and distributed sensing.
• Build scenario libraries, replay tooling, automated metrics, and CI gates to prevent regressions.
• Introduce structured logging, playback, and failure classification to accelerate field diagnosis.
• Build operator controls and safeguards that enable crews to use autonomy without continuous engineering support.
• Collaborate with platform, C2, product, and field teams to define clear interfaces and deliver cross-system capabilities.

What success looks like

• Perception and COLAV meet agreed performance and safety criteria in representative trials.
• Swarm capabilities are used routinely in multi-USV exercises and degrade safely under constraints.
• Operators can configure and use autonomy without day-to-day engineering intervention.
• Automated scenario testing prevents safety and reliability regressions.
• Field failures can be reproduced and diagnosed within an agreed timeframe.
• Capabilities have documented operating envelopes, limitations, and evidence of field readiness.

Required qualifications

• 8+ years of production software or backend engineering experience.
• Strong experience with Java, Python, or .NET/C#.
• Strong mathematical foundations relevant to autonomy and robotics.
• Experience with distributed, real-time, event-driven, or mission-critical systems.
• Understanding of sockets, UDP, latency, packet loss, and low-level protocols.
• Strong testing, observability, debugging, and operational ownership.
• Clear communication and cross-team collaboration skills.

Nice to have

• Experience with C++, Rust, or C.
• Experience with robotics, autonomous vehicles, maritime autonomy, or UxV systems.
• Knowledge of perception, sensor fusion, navigation, planning, or control systems.
• Experience with COLAV, simulation, replay tooling, or multi-agent systems.
• Experience in defence, C2/C4ISR, or constrained operating environments.

The nature of combat has changed. Tomorrow’s battlefield success depends on autonomy, speed, and adaptability. And UFORCE is ready. Are You?