Chief Engineer

About this role

Lead the Collaborative Autonomy and Controls group at STR to design and deploy multi-agent autonomous systems for national security missions. This Chief Engineer role combines technical architecture expertise with team leadership, customer engagement, and program strategy to advance state-of-the-art autonomy technologies.

What you'll do

• Lead teams of 10-40 engineers through full Agile development cycles for autonomous system projects
• Develop system architectures and implementation strategies for multi-agent autonomy technologies
• Engage customers on problem definition, solution concepts, and integration into broader capability ecosystems
• Conduct software solution architecture and design reviews
• Conceptualize, market, and help capture new programs to advance group capabilities
• Mentor and delegate tasks across diverse engineering teams working on varied technical domains

What they're looking for

• Autonomy systems and algorithm development
• Multi-agent systems, coordination, and collaborative autonomy stacks
• Motion planning, constraint optimization, and controls
• Team leadership and Agile program management
• System architecture and design
• Customer engagement and business development
• Java, C++, Python, or similar software languages
• Machine learning and AI architectures

Benefits

• Competitive salary range: $233,000-$320,000
• Flexible, hybrid work environment
• Opportunity to advance national security technology
• Collaborative learning culture
• Work on cutting-edge autonomy and AI challenges
• Multiple office locations (Boston MA, Arlington VA, Dayton OH, Melbourne FL, Carlsbad CA)

Likely interview questions

• Describe your experience leading large engineering teams through Agile development and how you've structured task delegation and maintained team performance.
• Walk us through a complex multi-agent autonomous system you've designed—what were the key architectural decisions and coordination challenges?