Senior Software Engineer - State Estimation

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CompanyFounded 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. You can check out our videos here.
We believe that technology should be developed for and with the customer. In 2023, we signed our first federal contract with the Government of Canada, during which we performed Canada’s first autonomous gate-to-gate flight between two airports. Since then, we have won several additional contracts, including contracts with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the Department of National Defence (DND) spanning platform, mission, and collaborative autonomy. We pride ourselves on knowing the customer better than themselves, serving them better than anyone else, and ensuring they succeed in a world with everyone else.
This year alone, we performed the world's first demonstration of collaborative teaming between an autonomous airplane and an autonomous helicopter. We also deployed Canada's first optionally piloted aircraft with a military callsign. We are now building novel autonomous aircraft for DND and Canada's allies, aligning our immediate defence clients with a backlog of interest across northern wholesalers, public safety agencies, freight forwarders, and humanitarian organizations. Autonomy is reshaping the way we move, understand, and protect the world.
Our team has years of experience with piloting, commercial drone operations, and autonomous mobile robotics—we're concentrating the world's best software, robotics, and aeronautical expertise to pursue our mission of making air transportation accessible to everyone. If you’re up for the challenge, we want to hear from you.
Position OverviewAs a Senior State Estimation Engineer, you will collaborate with peers to:
Lead development of the state estimation stack. You will shape its architecture and roadmap, lead design reviews, and hold the bar on code quality
Research, design and develop the systems required for handling degraded or denied GNSS signals, ensuring a reliable aircraft state estimate 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 research into what new sensors the aircraft should carry next
Stay hands‑on: write production C++, review the handwritten code, and prototype/compare various estimation and sensing approaches
Deploy tools for analyzing and providing quality metrics of state estimates for downstream users, establishing what the estimator can provide and the extent to which its outputs can be trusted
Represent the estimation team in design reviews with the 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), including INS mechanisation,GNSS/INS integration
Developing vision‑based navigation that limits drift on long flights without GNSS, such as visual‑inertial odometry, image‑to‑map matching, and landmark and runway detection
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 (e.G. innovation gating, cross‑checks, jamming and spoofing detection, protection levels)
Writing production C++ that runs in real time on the aircraft, tested against recorded flight logs, simulation, HIL, and flight
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, and pass security assessment for the Controlled Goods Program
Qualifications
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: recursive and batch estimation techniques (linear/nonlinear Kalman filters and their variants), factor graphs, optimisation techniques, observability analysis, and covariance tuning
Experience with inertial navigation systems and GNSS/INS integration, including IMU error modelling, attitude representations, and coordinate frames
Experience developing state estimation/localization approaches without GNSS using alternative sensors, particularly vision (e.G. visual odometry, VIO, visual SLAM, map matching)
Experience integrating and calibrating various sensors (e.G. intrinsics and extrinsic sensor calibration, time synchronisation, etc.)
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: air data, angle of attack and sideslip, wind estimation, and radar or laser altimetry
Alternate methods for localizing/navigating without GNSS: terrain‑referenced navigation, LiDAR localisation, or signals of opportunity
Integrity monitoring (e.G. RAIM, protection levels) and detecting GNSS jamming and spoofing
Commercial GNSS/INS units (e.G. NovAtel SPAN, VectorNav, SBG), or running vision on embedded or GPU hardware
Safety‑critical standards and processes (e.G. DO-178C, MISRA C++, static analysis)
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
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