ELI - Autonomy Software Engineer

About the Role

This role is based at the Leonardo office in Cascina Costa (VA) and focuses on developing the software foundations of the autonomy activity. The position combines hands‑on autonomy software development with a genuine research and exploration mandate, allowing you to investigate methodologies, design approaches, and turn them into reusable frameworks, reference architectures and engineering procedures for the wider team.

Responsibilities

• Investigate and evaluate software methodologies, paradigms, design patterns and tooling for dependable autonomy software; produce trade studies, reference architectures, guidelines and procedures.
• Design and prototype reusable frameworks and infrastructure for deterministic autonomy software.
• Bridge research‑grade components and robust, production‑quality deployment, including partitioning and mixed‑criticality concepts.
• Build internal tooling and test/CI harnesses for deterministic validation.
• Contribute to the team's technical direction, coding standards and best practices, and mentor other engineers.
• Move fluidly between speculative exploration (prototypes, proofs of concept, open problems) and rigorous, production‑grade code.

Qualifications

• Master degree or PhD in information engineering, computer engineering, automation engineering.
• 3–6 years of professional experience in software development in modern C++ (C++14/17).
• Hands‑on familiarity with Docker, PX4, ROS 2, Gazebo and the C++ robotics ecosystem (BehaviorTree.CPP, OpenCV, PCL, Eigen, etc.).
• Hands‑on experience deploying ML / autonomy workloads on‑target on GPU architectures (e.g. NVIDIA Jetson).
• Proven experience in at least one autonomy‑related domain: robotics, ADAS / automotive, space, UAV(s) or similar.
• Strong computer‑science fundamentals: concurrency, memory models, scheduling, software architecture and design patterns.
• Research and investigative mindset: the ability to frame open problems, explore options independently and reason from first principles.
• Comfort reading technical standards and specifications and translating them into concrete engineering procedures.
• Ability to work in a team.
• Problem‑solving oriented English knowledge: B2/C1.

Nice to Have

• Background in any safety‑ / mission‑critical domain (aerospace, automotive, railway, medical, industrial or defence).
• Experience with RTOS, bare‑metal or deterministic execution environments.
• Formal methods, static analysis (e.g. MISRA) or model checking.
• Open‑source contributions, publications or patents.

Benefits

• A greenfield, foundational role with real ownership of the team's software infrastructure.
• A genuine research and exploration mandate, with room to publish and present.
• A multidisciplinary team working at the intersection of autonomy, robotics and dependable computing.
• Hybrid employment, permanent contract.
• 13th‑month salary, performance bonus linked to business results.
• Welfare vouchers worth €250 per year.
• Ongoing training and professional development opportunities, including both technical and soft skills.
• Focus on people’s well‑being and safety, offering a variety of solutions tailored to their needs.

The company reserves the right to assess the appropriate employment level and compensation package based on objective criteria emerging during the selection process and in accordance with the principles of fairness, transparency and equal opportunities established by applicable legislation.