Senior Software Engineer, Robotics and Flight Software

Apply on YC · Original job listing

• Role: Engineering / Robotics
• Experience: 3+ years
• Visa: US citizen/visa only
• Skills: C, C++, Python, Rust, Embedded Linux, Firmware, Microcontrollers, Sensor integration

We are Jasper and Alessandro, the founders of Impact Drones (YC S26). Jasper (TU Delft aerospace MSc) has built drones for over a decade, including the Hannover Messe VTOL competition winner, and worked with special forces on the 2025 NATO Summit counter-drone plan; Alessandro (Columbia MSc) built the pipeline behind our 176M USD in signed LOIs.

We are hiring one of our first engineers, on-site in Los Angeles, to build the software that decides and launches an interceptor when a hostile drone comes for a data center, an airport or a power grid.

In March 2026, Iranian drones struck three AWS data centers in the UAE and Bahrain. Fiber-optic FPV drones cannot be jammed. The only thing that stops them is a physical intercept. That is what we build.

About Impact Drones
We sell Air Defense as a Service to civilian critical infrastructure. One container on site senses, decides and launches. It combines a sensor mast, our engagement software and 8 open launch bays built to our Open Launch Standard. The bays take SABLE, our jet interceptor, and third-party interceptors too. Interceptors change. The bay stays.

What you will own

• The engagement path in our container software: radar track, threat evaluation, the authority's two-step release, launch from a bay.
• Bay and launch control firmware with failsafes, and the datalink to SABLE in flight.
• Field testing at outdoor ranges, and setting the test schedule with Jasper.
• Your tools, and a say in who we hire next.