Director, Software Engineering

About us:

Guardian Agriculture is developing large multicopters for applying agricultural chemicals to high-value crops. Relative to existing plane- and helicopter-based crop spraying solutions, our systems radically improve precision and safety while reducing chemical use, reducing impact on pollinating insects, and minimizing opportunities for organisms to acquire chemical resistance.

Guardian is a small, multi-disciplinary team of talented engineers, technicians, and operators who prioritize high reliability product and service design over exploratory R&D. We are a hands-on team and split our time between development work, system testing, and field deployments. We value safety, thoughtful design, teamwork, and a growth mindset as we scale the organization and build an autonomous system that farmers can trust.

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Summary:

Guardian Agriculture is seeking a Director of Software Engineering to help design, prototype, test, and harden our next generation of large format multicopters, ground systems, and fleet and data management applications. They will lead our team of software, infrastructure, support, and robotics engineers, setting scope, priorities, and standards that enable the team to deliver high quality, validated, maintainable designs that are aligned to the business’ needs, constraints, and schedules. The successful candidate will combine aerospace, autonomous vehicle, farm equipment, and SaaS design styles to deliver highly integrated electromechanical products that are safe, reliable, usable, and operate effectively in challenging environments. The role calls for a balance of people management, organization design, program management, communication, and experience-based technical guidance.

About us:

Guardian Agriculture is developing large multicopters for applying agricultural chemicals to high-value crops. Relative to existing plane- and helicopter-based crop spraying solutions, our systems radically improve precision and safety while reducing chemical use, reducing impact on pollinating insects, and minimizing opportunities for organisms to acquire chemical resistance.

Guardian is a small, multi-disciplinary team of talented engineers, technicians, and operators who prioritize high reliability product and service design over exploratory R&D. We are a hands-on team and split our time between development work, system testing, and field deployments. We value safety, thoughtful design, teamwork, and a growth mindset as we scale the organization and build an autonomous system that farmers can trust.

What You Will Do:

• Deliver high quality, appropriate software applications on time.
• Lead and manage the team’s software, infrastructure, support, and robotics engineers and projects.
• Provide a steady, thoughtful, creative, and experienced voice in cross-functional risk management conversations.
• Foster a culture of innovation, continuous learning, and knowledge sharing within the team.
• Collaborate with team leaders and product managers to define requirements, deliverables, and timelines, ensuring alignment with overall business goals, human factors design, and full system functionality
• Work with hardware, firmware, and flight operations teams to implement effective development, deployment, training, support, and documentation processes.
• Develop and maintain development, deployment, and data management infrastructure.
• Review and provide constructive feedback on implementations, ensuring adherence to industry standards, product specifications, and regulatory and safety requirements.
• Contribute to project work directly through architecture, SOPs, and technical guidance while supporting functional, compliance, and field testing.
• Initiate and develop relationships with internal and external partners.

To Be Successful You Will Have:

• Proven experience in software engineering and product delivery, preferably in robotics, aviation, autonomous vehicles, or related fields, with at least 3 years of experience in a leadership or managerial role
• A rigorous requirements and systems thinking approach to new product introduction.
• Desire to learn and innovate while solving complex problems.
• Strong personal motivation to deliver solutions that work when deployed in the real world.
• Ability to balance forward-thinking implementation choices with delivering solutions that meet immediate business needs.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Benefits:

Flexible time off, competitive salary, stock options, free company lunch every day, comprehensive benefits package, lots of tools, and the opportunity to build and use play with flying machines that will have an environmental impact.

Guardian Agriculture provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.