Air Vehicle Lead Systems Engineer
Chaos
CHAOS Inc. is a global technology company delivering next-generation capabilities to the defense and critical industrial sectors. Founded in 2022 by a seasoned leadership team, CHAOS has quickly become the place where world-class multi-disciplinary engineers come to build mission-critical technologies. CHAOS has a mission-focused culture, dedicated to solving the toughest technical challenges. Its unique agile engineering approach enables rapid prototyping, while deep partnerships with defense and industry ensure real-world solutions.
Role Overview:
- You will be working to lead the system development of a new and exciting interceptor air vehicle product on an aggressive timeline with a team of industry experts.
Responsibilities:
- Ability to leverage commercially available UAS and drone technology to build an air vehicle including motor/propulsion, controls, communications, and flight systems
- Integrate subsystems into the flight vehicle such as camera, RF detector, software, and communications
- Air Vehicle flight testing to include CA facilities, private, and government test ranges
- Air Vehicle requirements verification to include performance and environmental testing
- Anticipated domestic travel: 20% of the time
Minimum Requirements:
- Minimum education: Bachelor's Degree in a STEM field
- Proven track record of systems engineering in aerospace/defense environments with a focus on integration and verification
- Hands-on experience with development and test of unmanned systems to include drones and missiles
- Experience with UAS guidance and navigation implementation using open-source tool kits like ArduPilot
- RF sensor, subsystem or system development experience across multiple products or product classes (passive or active radar, datalink, electronic warfare, etc.)
Preferred Requirements:
- Master's Degree or PhD in a STEM field
- EO/IR sensor development and integration experience
- Experience with multiple early lifecycle development programs
- Guidance, Navigation, and Controls background or experience
- Physics-based simulation development experience
- Expert knowledge of DoD system verification processes and environmental requirements
- Domain expertise in Air Defense applications, including traditional ground-based air defense, counter UAS, and counter rocket/mortar applications across multiple services (Army, USMC, and SOCOM)
- Domain expertise in adversary airborne systems and/or tactics; Part 107 remote pilot certification
Why CHAOS?
- Health Benefits: Your medical, dental and vision benefits will be 100% paid for by the company
- Additional benefits: life, FSA, HSA, 401k (+ Company match), and more
- Our Perks: free daily lunch, ‘No meeting Fridays’, unlimited PTO, casual dress code
- Compensation Components: competitive base salaries, generous pre-IPO stock option grants, relocation assistance + (coming soon!) annual bonuses
- Company Size: 150 employees and counting!
- More About Us: We're building the next generation of aerospace, defense and critical industry technologies with a seasoned team of mission-focused individuals. We were founded in June 2022 and our goal is to become the platform where world-class engineers come to solve critical, real-world problems. We use agile engineering approaches which enable rapid prototyping, deep partnerships with the defense industry ensuring real-world application, and our newly-invented Coherence platform (through which we’ve made a fundamental breakthrough) improves sensor performance and decision-making in real-time. As of April 2025 we have raised $490M (including a $275M Series C at a $2B valuation) from some of the most prominent VC funds and investors including Accel, NEA, 8VC, and Valar. With a managing team that includes Epirus’ founding members (responsible for building a $1.5B company from scratch) + key drivers from Palantir (instrumental in Palantir’s growth to $1B in revenue), we are well-positioned to become one of the fastest growing companies to date!
The stated compensation range reflects only the targeted base compensation range and excludes additional earnings such as bonus, equity, and benefits. If your compensation requirements fall outside of the range, we still encourage you to apply. The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations.
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