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Dominion Dynamics is building autonomous ground vehicle systems for the Canadian Armed Forces and allies, operating in unstructured terrain—snow, mud, vegetation, darkness—without lane markings or GPS. You will set the technical direction for ground autonomy across perception, terrain assessment, localization, and mobility behaviors for uncrewed ground vehicles that operate alongside crewed vehicles and dismounted soldiers.
You will own the ground autonomy roadmap, translating capability requirements into sequenced technical plans with real milestones. Key responsibilities include:
- Building off-road perception and traversability systems that assess what terrain the vehicle can cross, at what speed, and what it must avoid—through snow, mud, dust, vegetation, and darkness, including negative obstacles.
- Developing localization and route-following that work without GNSS under canopy, in defiles, and underground, including taught-route and leader-follower operation modes.
- Designing the mobility behavior layer: route execution, convoy and follow-me behaviors, teleoperation handover, and autonomous decision-making when the operator link is cut by terrain.
- Integrating with AuraNet (the company's C2, mesh, and tasking layer) for bandwidth-constrained and disconnected operation.
- Setting evaluation standards for behaviors: what must be demonstrated in simulation, on the proving ground, and in trials before deployment, and determining where deterministic versus probabilistic policies belong.
- Hiring and leading the ground autonomy team, working directly with hardware, software, and simulation engineers.
- Participating in trials, integration work, and operator feedback cycles—moving from days to quarters, not quarters to years.
You will build on the same autonomy foundation as the company's air and maritime systems, ensuring new platforms inherit autonomy rather than developing it from scratch.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Senior engineering leader with a track record of fielding ground vehicle autonomy outdoors in unstructured terrain (defense, mining, forestry, agriculture, or construction where the environment is unmapped and unmarked).
- Deep expertise in ground autonomy: terrain perception and traversability, GNSS-denied localization and mapping, motion planning for vehicles with real mass and dynamics.
- Proven experience leading engineers—hiring, structuring, and setting technical direction for a team against an accountable roadmap.
- Command of both deterministic policies (predefined rules) and probabilistic approaches (decision-making under uncertainty), with clear judgment about which the mission requires.
- Track record of taking autonomy from prototype to fielded system: trial campaigns, failure analysis, and evidence that convinced stakeholders to trust the system.
- Based in Ottawa or willing to relocate; this role is on-site with the team and close to the customer.
NICE TO HAVE:
- Winter and Arctic operation experience; understanding of how snow, ice, and whiteout affect lidar and cameras.
- Experience teaming with crewed vehicles or dismounted soldiers (convoy, leader-follower, squad-level tasking).
- Underground, tunnel, or subterranean autonomy.
- Payload autonomy on ground platforms (remote weapon stations, EOD, resupply, casualty evacuation).
- Simulation-in-the-loop and sim-to-real validation.
- ROS 2 and edge compute on constrained, ruggedized hardware.
No defense background required; the company has hired people who didn't tick every box.
