Senior Software/Robotics Engineer in Burlington

Thank you for exploring opportunities at Ribbit! We look forward to speaking with you.

Company: Founded in 2020, Ribbit builds and operates autonomous airplanes. We develop technology that enables uncrewed gate-to-gate operations, having completed hundreds of autonomous flight hours on different aircraft, flown 10K+ hours in simulation, and secured flight authorities for remotely and optionally piloted flight. From defending sovereignty to delivering food and medical supplies, we are a trusted partner that businesses and governments rely on to test, operate, and deploy affordable autonomous aircraft.

Position Overview: As a Senior State Estimation Engineer, you will collaborate with peers to:

• Lead development of the state estimation stack, shaping its architecture and roadmap, leading design reviews, and ensuring code quality.
• Research, design and develop systems for handling degraded or denied GNSS signals, ensuring reliable aircraft state estimates when satellite navigation is jammed, spoofed, or unavailable.
• Own the sensor suite deployed on our aircraft, from selection, calibration, time synchronisation, and health monitoring, to researching new sensors.
• Stay hands-on: write production C++, review handwritten code, and prototype/compare various estimation and sensing approaches.
• Deploy tools for analyzing and providing quality metrics of state estimates for downstream users.
• Represent the estimation team in design reviews with navigation, controls, hardware, and flight-test teams.
• Onboard and mentor junior engineers that join the team.

Your key objectives will include:

• Designing and implementing estimators that output the aircraft's state (e.g. EKF, error-state KF, UKF, factor-graph methods).
• Developing vision-based navigation that limits drift on long flights without GNSS.
• Fusing a wide range of sensors: IMUs, multi-antenna GNSS, magnetometers, air data, barometric, radar and laser altimeters, cameras, and LiDAR.
• Estimating wind, air data, and height above terrain accurately enough to support automatic takeoff, approach, flare, and landing.
• Building fault detection and integrity monitoring into the estimator.
• Writing production C++ that runs in real time on the aircraft.

Other Details:

• No. of Positions: 1
• Duration: Permanent Full-Time, starting December 2026
• Base Compensation: 153920 to 168480
• This is a hybrid role involving remote work and on-site presence to support field tests—you must be in the Greater Toronto Area or willing to relocate.
• Competitive and comprehensive compensation (e.g. 3 weeks of vacation upon joining, comprehensive health and wellness plans).
• You must be eligible to hold a Government of Canada security clearance at the Reliability or Secret level.

Qualifications: As the ideal candidate, you meet the following requirements:

• A university degree in aerospace, electrical, mechanical, or software engineering, computer science, robotics, or a related field.
• Experience developing state estimation or navigation software that has run on real hardware.
• Modern C++ on Linux with Eigen, and estimation or vision libraries (e.g. GTSAM, Ceres, OpenCV).
• A strong foundation in probabilistic estimation techniques.
• Experience with inertial navigation systems and GNSS/INS integration.
• Experience developing state estimation/localization approaches without GNSS using alternative sensors, particularly vision.
• Experience integrating and calibrating various sensors.
• Python or MATLAB for analysis, filter tuning, and flight-log post-processing.

Preferred and bonus qualifications include experience with:

• Developing and/or flight-testing autonomous aircraft or drones in a professional setting.
• Aircraft-specific sensing modalities.
• Alternate methods for localizing/navigating without GNSS.
• Integrity monitoring and detecting GNSS jamming and spoofing.
• Commercial GNSS/INS units.
• Safety-critical standards and processes.

You also possess the soft skills to work in a high-stakes, tight-knit company, such as:

• Openness to give and receive feedback.
• Adaptability when priorities move.
• Self-awareness about your own strengths and gaps.
• Taking initiative with minimal guidance.