Senior Software/Robotics Engineer - State Estimation
Full-time
Burlington, ON, Canada · Remote
CAD 153,920-168,480 / year
Posted on Oct 14, 2026
Senior Software/Robotics Engineer - State Estimation
Description
Thank you for exploring opportunities at Ribbit! We look forward to speaking with you.
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Note: We read everything that comes our way. Let your outstanding résumé (cover letter and design portfolio encouraged but optional) do the talking. For important questions or comments, contact us at careers@flyribbit.com.
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. 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 Overview
As 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
- Lead development of navigation without GPS or with degraded GPS, keeping the aircraft located when satellite navigation is jammed, spoofed, or unavailable
- Own the sensor suite behind the estimator: selection, calibration, lever arms, time synchronisation, health monitoring, and what the aircraft should carry next
- Stay hands-on: write production C++, review the hardest changes, and prototype new filters and sensing approaches
- Represent estimation in design reviews with the navigation, controls, hardware, and flight-test teams, defining what the estimator provides and how far it can be trusted, and mentor the engineers who join the team
Your key objectives will include:
- Designing and implementing filters that estimate the aircraft's state (e.g. EKF, error-state KF, UKF, factor-graph methods), including INS mechanisation and GNSS/INS integration
- Developing vision-based navigation that limits drift on long flights without GPS, 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
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: Kalman filters and their variants, nonlinear estimation, observability, and covariance tuning
- Experience with inertial navigation and GNSS/INS integration, including IMU error modelling, attitude representations, and coordinate frames
- Experience with navigation without GPS using alternative sensors, particularly vision (e.g. visual odometry, VIO, visual SLAM, map matching)
- Experience integrating and calibrating several kinds of sensor (e.g. camera and IMU calibration, lever arms, time synchronisation)
- 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: air data, angle of attack and sideslip, wind estimation, and radar or laser altimetry
- Other ways of navigating without GPS: 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
Compensation
$153,920.00 - $168,480.00 per year
