Autonomous Systems Engineer Jobs
Autonomous Systems Engineer jobs are open from new-grad to principal across defense, automotive, robotics, and aerospace, with specializations in perception, motion planning, and sensor fusion. See the openings below and apply to the ones that match your experience.
Find JobsOverview
Showing 5 of 84+ Autonomous Systems Engineer jobs
When you join Verizon
You want more out of a career. A place to share your ideas freely — even if they’re daring or different. Where the true you can learn, grow, and thrive. At Verizon, we power and empower how people live, work and play by connecting them to what brings them joy. We do what we love — driving innovation, creativity, and impact in the world. Our V Team is a community of people who anticipate, lead, and believe that listening is where learning begins. In crisis and in celebration, we come together — lifting our communities and building trust in how we show up, everywhere & always. Want in? Join the #VTeamLife.
Why Build AI at Verizon?
Most AI engineers are stuck building isolated chatbots, tweaking prompts, or fine-tuning APIs in low-stakes sandboxes with human babysitters in every loop. At Verizon, we're architecting the agentic nervous system powering hundreds of mission-critical internal applications, voice systems, and automated workflows executing millions of real decisions every day.
The real engineering thrill here isn't just giving agents autonomy—it's solving the hardest systems challenges in modern software: building the deterministic guardrails, sub-second circuit breakers, and continuous evaluation architectures that validate, observe, and optimize autonomous workflows at scale. You will combine advanced AI engineering skills with our governance frameworks to unleash the power of enterprise AI. With strategic partnerships spanning Google Cloud, Nvidia, AWS, and Anthropic, you won't just run experiments in a sandbox—you'll be the lead builder at the center of Verizon's most critical AI infrastructure.
What you’ll be doing...
As a Principal hands-on architectural engineer and technical lead within the Enterprise AI Control Plane team, you are the chief builder of the systems that make our AI faster, cheaper, and safer. You will architect the complex pipelines connecting Verizon’s AI developer platforms (AWS Bedrock, Atlas AI) with our centralized governance hubs (AEGIS, KAIROS). Your focus is deeply technical: designing enterprise-wide agentic evaluation systems, optimizing model inference, and deploying the zero-trust firewalls required for autonomous agents to run safely at a Fortune 20 scale.
In this role you will...
- Architect Agentic Evaluation: Design and code the core engineering systems for continuous AI agent validation, real-time observability, and automated evaluation metrics (e.g., LLM-as-a-judge).
- Drive Optimization & Fine-Tuning: Lead the fine-tuning of LLMs specifically to increase system throughput and aggressively reduce inference costs for agentic execution pipelines.
- Implement Reinforcement Learning: Utilize advanced RL techniques—including both harness tuning and model weights tuning—to optimize autonomous agent accuracy and decision reliability.
- Build Semantic Routing & Classification: Design and deploy lightweight classification models (e.g., JEV) to intercept, triage, and intelligently route traffic, minimizing expensive frontier LLM calls.
- Automate Governance: Architect and code automated CI/CD pipelines that inject Security and RIL (Responsible AI, Integrity, Legal) guardrails directly into the deployment lifecycle.
- Cross-Functional Technical Leadership: Serve as the technical anchor, interacting daily with AI Platform Engineers, DevOps/DataOps teams, and AI product developers to integrate their models seamlessly into the KAIROS control plane and AEGIS registry.
- Design IAM & Boundary Logic: Architect Identity & Access Management (IAM) and routing logic within the Agent Gateway to ensure autonomous workflows operate with strictly enforced, deterministic access boundaries.
What we’re looking for...
You've moved beyond standard RAG prototypes to solve the hard, unglamorous systems challenges of autonomous enterprise AI. You are a hands-on builder equally comfortable designing multi-agent execution frameworks, optimizing model weights, and building the sub-second circuit breakers that prevent autonomous systems from going rogue.
You will need to have...
- Bachelor’s degree or four or more years of work experience.
- Six or more years of relevant experience required, demonstrated through one or a combination of work and/or military experience, or specialized training.
- Four or more years of hands-on experience as an AI Engineer/Architect designing and deploying scalable, multi-agent frameworks leveraging interaction standards such as Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent-to-Agent (A2A) communications.
- Deep engineering experience in LLM operationalization, orchestration frameworks, model evaluation pipelines, fine-tuning, and automated safety testing.
- Experience optimizing LLM inference costs and throughput, utilizing classification models or semantic routing to reduce large-model dependencies.
- Experience in cloud architecture (AWS Bedrock, GCP) and CI/CD deployment automation.
- Experience defending agentic ecosystems against prompt injection, data exfiltration, tool abuse, and hallucinations in production environments.
- Experience shipping software into high-traffic, regulated enterprise environments where downtime or out-of-bounds agent actions carry severe real-world consequences.
Even better if you also have...
- Masters or PhD in Computer Science, AI/ML, or a related field.
- Six or more years of platform engineering, applied ML engineering, or AI science.
- Advanced programming skills in Python, Go, and Kubernetes.
- Hands-on expertise with advanced model optimization techniques (Reinforcement Learning, RLHF/RLAIF, LoRA, QLoRA).
- Experience building real-time telemetry, trace-level monitoring (OpenTelemetry, Langfuse, Arize), and automated fail-safes. (e.g., When an agent enters a recursive tool-calling loop or attempts an unauthorized action, your systems isolate the process and revert state in milliseconds).
- Knowledge of automated safety testing, red-teaming methodologies, and Agentic Zero-Trust IAM architectures for non-human identities.
If Verizon and this role sound like a fit for you, we encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet every “even better” qualification listed above.
Where you’ll be working
In this hybrid role, you'll have a defined work location that includes working from home and a minimum of three days per week in the office, which will be set by your manager. Employees are responsible for maintaining compliance with hybrid work policies.Scheduled Weekly Hours
40Equal Employment Opportunity
Verizon is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to veteran status, disability or other legally protected characteristics.
Benefits and Compensation
Our benefits are designed to help you move forward in your career, and in areas of your life outside of Verizon. From health and wellness benefit options including: medical, dental, vision, short and long term disability, basic life insurance, supplemental life insurance, AD&D insurance, identity theft protection, pet insurance and group home & auto insurance. We also offer a matched 401(k) savings plan, up to 8 company paid holidays per year and up to 6 personal days per year, paid parental leave, adoption assistance and tuition assistance, plus other incentives, we’ve got you covered with our award-winning total rewards package. Depending on the role, employees have the opportunity to receive compensation in the form of premium pay such as overtime, shift differential, holiday pay, allowances, etc. Newly hired employees receive up to 15 days of vacation per year, which grows with additional service. For part-timers, your coverage will vary as you may be eligible for some of these benefits depending on your individual circumstances.
The salary will vary depending on your location and confirmed job-related skills and experience. This is an incentive based position with the potential to earn more. For part-time roles, your compensation will be adjusted to reflect your hours.The annual salary range for the location(s) listed on this job requisition based on a full-time schedule is: $120,500.00 - $231,000.00.The annual salary range for the Illinois location(s) listed on this job requisition based on a full-time schedule is: $132,500.00 - $231,000.00.Verizon will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.When you join Verizon
You want more out of a career. A place to share your ideas freely — even if they’re daring or different. Where the true you can learn, grow, and thrive. At Verizon, we power and empower how people live, work and play by connecting them to what brings them joy. We do what we love — driving innovation, creativity, and impact in the world. Our V Team is a community of people who anticipate, lead, and believe that listening is where learning begins. In crisis and in celebration, we come together — lifting our communities and building trust in how we show up, everywhere & always. Want in? Join the #VTeamLife.
Why Build AI at Verizon?
Most AI engineers are stuck building isolated chatbots, tweaking prompts, or fine-tuning APIs in low-stakes sandboxes with human babysitters in every loop. At Verizon, we're architecting the agentic nervous system powering hundreds of mission-critical internal applications, voice systems, and automated workflows executing millions of real decisions every day.
The real engineering thrill here isn't just giving agents autonomy—it's solving the hardest systems challenges in modern software: building the deterministic guardrails, sub-second circuit breakers, and continuous evaluation architectures that validate, observe, and optimize autonomous workflows at scale. You will combine advanced AI engineering skills with our governance frameworks to unleash the power of enterprise AI. With strategic partnerships spanning Google Cloud, Nvidia, AWS, and Anthropic, you won't just run experiments in a sandbox—you'll be the lead builder at the center of Verizon's most critical AI infrastructure.
What you’ll be doing...
As a Principal hands-on architectural engineer and technical lead within the Enterprise AI Control Plane team, you are the chief builder of the systems that make our AI faster, cheaper, and safer. You will architect the complex pipelines connecting Verizon’s AI developer platforms (AWS Bedrock, Atlas AI) with our centralized governance hubs (AEGIS, KAIROS). Your focus is deeply technical: designing enterprise-wide agentic evaluation systems, optimizing model inference, and deploying the zero-trust firewalls required for autonomous agents to run safely at a Fortune 20 scale.
In this role you will...
- Architect Agentic Evaluation: Design and code the core engineering systems for continuous AI agent validation, real-time observability, and automated evaluation metrics (e.g., LLM-as-a-judge).
- Drive Optimization & Fine-Tuning: Lead the fine-tuning of LLMs specifically to increase system throughput and aggressively reduce inference costs for agentic execution pipelines.
- Implement Reinforcement Learning: Utilize advanced RL techniques—including both harness tuning and model weights tuning—to optimize autonomous agent accuracy and decision reliability.
- Build Semantic Routing & Classification: Design and deploy lightweight classification models (e.g., JEV) to intercept, triage, and intelligently route traffic, minimizing expensive frontier LLM calls.
- Automate Governance: Architect and code automated CI/CD pipelines that inject Security and RIL (Responsible AI, Integrity, Legal) guardrails directly into the deployment lifecycle.
- Cross-Functional Technical Leadership: Serve as the technical anchor, interacting daily with AI Platform Engineers, DevOps/DataOps teams, and AI product developers to integrate their models seamlessly into the KAIROS control plane and AEGIS registry.
- Design IAM & Boundary Logic: Architect Identity & Access Management (IAM) and routing logic within the Agent Gateway to ensure autonomous workflows operate with strictly enforced, deterministic access boundaries.
What we’re looking for...
You've moved beyond standard RAG prototypes to solve the hard, unglamorous systems challenges of autonomous enterprise AI. You are a hands-on builder equally comfortable designing multi-agent execution frameworks, optimizing model weights, and building the sub-second circuit breakers that prevent autonomous systems from going rogue.
You will need to have...
- Bachelor’s degree or four or more years of work experience.
- Six or more years of relevant experience required, demonstrated through one or a combination of work and/or military experience, or specialized training.
- Four or more years of hands-on experience as an AI Engineer/Architect designing and deploying scalable, multi-agent frameworks leveraging interaction standards such as Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent-to-Agent (A2A) communications.
- Deep engineering experience in LLM operationalization, orchestration frameworks, model evaluation pipelines, fine-tuning, and automated safety testing.
- Experience optimizing LLM inference costs and throughput, utilizing classification models or semantic routing to reduce large-model dependencies.
- Experience in cloud architecture (AWS Bedrock, GCP) and CI/CD deployment automation.
- Experience defending agentic ecosystems against prompt injection, data exfiltration, tool abuse, and hallucinations in production environments.
- Experience shipping software into high-traffic, regulated enterprise environments where downtime or out-of-bounds agent actions carry severe real-world consequences.
Even better if you also have...
- Masters or PhD in Computer Science, AI/ML, or a related field.
- Six or more years of platform engineering, applied ML engineering, or AI science.
- Advanced programming skills in Python, Go, and Kubernetes.
- Hands-on expertise with advanced model optimization techniques (Reinforcement Learning, RLHF/RLAIF, LoRA, QLoRA).
- Experience building real-time telemetry, trace-level monitoring (OpenTelemetry, Langfuse, Arize), and automated fail-safes. (e.g., When an agent enters a recursive tool-calling loop or attempts an unauthorized action, your systems isolate the process and revert state in milliseconds).
- Knowledge of automated safety testing, red-teaming methodologies, and Agentic Zero-Trust IAM architectures for non-human identities.
If Verizon and this role sound like a fit for you, we encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet every “even better” qualification listed above.
Where you’ll be working
In this hybrid role, you'll have a defined work location that includes working from home and a minimum of three days per week in the office, which will be set by your manager. Employees are responsible for maintaining compliance with hybrid work policies.Scheduled Weekly Hours
40Equal Employment Opportunity
Verizon is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to veteran status, disability or other legally protected characteristics.
Benefits and Compensation
Our benefits are designed to help you move forward in your career, and in areas of your life outside of Verizon. From health and wellness benefit options including: medical, dental, vision, short and long term disability, basic life insurance, supplemental life insurance, AD&D insurance, identity theft protection, pet insurance and group home & auto insurance. We also offer a matched 401(k) savings plan, up to 8 company paid holidays per year and up to 6 personal days per year, paid parental leave, adoption assistance and tuition assistance, plus other incentives, we’ve got you covered with our award-winning total rewards package. Depending on the role, employees have the opportunity to receive compensation in the form of premium pay such as overtime, shift differential, holiday pay, allowances, etc. Newly hired employees receive up to 15 days of vacation per year, which grows with additional service. For part-timers, your coverage will vary as you may be eligible for some of these benefits depending on your individual circumstances.
The salary will vary depending on your location and confirmed job-related skills and experience. This is an incentive based position with the potential to earn more. For part-time roles, your compensation will be adjusted to reflect your hours.The annual salary range for the location(s) listed on this job requisition based on a full-time schedule is: $120,500.00 - $231,000.00.The annual salary range for the Illinois location(s) listed on this job requisition based on a full-time schedule is: $132,500.00 - $231,000.00.Verizon will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.See All 84 Autonomous Systems Engineer Jobs
Find roles that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find JobsAutonomous Systems Engineer Job Market
Who's Hiring
- Flytrex15
- Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory13
- MITRE4
- NVIDIA2
- Nevada Gold Mines2
Top Industries Hiring
- Mining & Natural Resources
- Education
- Manufacturing
- Science & Research
- Aerospace & Defense
What Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in autonomous systems engineer jobs.
- Bachelor's or master's degree in robotics, electrical engineering, computer science, or a related field
- Proficiency in C++ and Python for real-time embedded and perception systems
- Hands-on experience with ROS or ROS 2 in simulation and on physical hardware
- Demonstrated work with sensor fusion combining LIDAR, radar, and camera data
- Experience with motion planning, path planning, or control system development
- Familiarity with safety standards such as ISO 26262, DO-178C, or MIL-STD-882
Tips for Your Autonomous Systems Engineer Job Search
Tailor your resume for each stack
Autonomous systems roles split sharply between ROS-heavy robotics shops and proprietary middleware environments in automotive or aerospace. Call out your specific frameworks, sensor types, and simulation tools in a dedicated skills section so your resume clears keyword filters for each posting.
Highlight hardware and software integration
Many candidates document software contributions only. Recruiters for autonomous systems roles want to see where you owned the full stack, from LIDAR or camera driver code down to the control loop. Name the specific sensors and ECUs you integrated, not just the algorithms.
Apply early to roles that fit
Migrate Mate lists autonomous systems engineer openings from across the United States in one place, so you can find roles that match and apply directly to each listing.
Filter by safety-critical domain experience
Defense and aviation employers screen heavily for ISO 26262, DO-178C, or MIL-STD experience. If your background includes any safety-critical certification work, list it in your resume header and repeat it in your cover letter so it appears before recruiters open your full application.
Prepare a system-level design walkthrough
Interviews for autonomous systems engineer roles almost always include a whiteboard or virtual design session. Practice walking through a full perception-to-actuation pipeline, explaining your tradeoff decisions at each stage, latency constraints, and how you tested in both simulation and on hardware.
Negotiate by scope, not just title
Autonomous systems teams vary widely in what an engineer actually owns. Before accepting any offer, clarify whether you'll own full subsystems or contribute narrowly to one module, since your scope directly affects how fast you can build the portfolio needed for your next role.
Autonomous Systems Engineer Jobs: Frequently Asked Questions
Which companies are hiring the most autonomous systems engineers?
The companies hiring the most autonomous systems engineers right now include Flytrex, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and MITRE, with the largest share of openings in Texas, Maryland, and California, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. Demand is especially concentrated in automotive OEM programs, defense contractors, and venture-backed robotics companies scaling to production.
How many autonomous systems engineer jobs are remote?
About 29% of autonomous systems engineer openings are fully remote or hybrid as of November 2026, reflecting the hands-on hardware requirements most roles carry. Software-only sub-disciplines such as simulation engineering, motion planning algorithm development, and perception model training tend to have the highest share of remote-eligible positions.
How do you become an autonomous systems engineer?
Start with a degree in robotics, electrical engineering, computer science, or mechatronics, then build hands-on experience through capstone projects, open-source ROS contributions, or research positions. Focus on one specialization such as perception, planning, or controls, deploy real hardware projects you can demo, and pursue roles at companies with active autonomous programs to build domain depth quickly.
How do you get hired as an autonomous systems engineer with little experience?
Build a hardware portfolio before you apply. Assemble a small autonomous ground vehicle or drone using open-source stacks, document your sensor integration and software architecture on a public repository, and write up your design decisions. Hiring teams in this field respond to working systems far more than coursework. Internships at robotics startups or defense labs are also a direct path to a first full-time role.
What does the autonomous systems engineer interview process look like?
Most processes run three to four rounds. An initial technical screen tests your C++ or Python fundamentals and robotics math, including kinematics and state estimation. A system design round asks you to architect a perception or planning pipeline under real-world constraints. A hardware round may involve debugging or reviewing sensor integration code. Final rounds typically focus on project deep-dives and team fit.
Where can I find and apply to autonomous systems engineer jobs?
You can find and apply to autonomous systems engineer jobs on Migrate Mate, which lists current openings from across the United States. Search the listings to find roles that match your specialization and experience level, then apply directly to each one that fits.
See All 84 Autonomous Systems Engineer Jobs
Find roles that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Jobs