📍 Bucharest / Remote (EU) | Full-time | Equity + Growth

At Kalkan Defense Systems, we don’t wait for the future — we build it.
We’re designing Europe’s next-generation autonomous combat UAVs and the AI platform that will orchestrate them: KRONOS, our Autonomous Mission Orchestration system.

Our goal: to redefine air superiority through autonomy, AI-driven mission logic, and swarm coordination — fully developed and built in Europe.

What you’ll do

• Design and implement ML models for autonomy, swarm coordination, and decision-making.

• Build the sim-to-real pipeline using environments like AirSim/Gazebo.

• Lead the ML data lifecycle: ingestion, labeling, training, and deployment.

• Optimize models to run on edge hardware (GPU, embedded) for real-time inference.

• Lead the architecture and development of the Kronos AI autonomy layer

• Develop and integrate reinforcement learning and computer vision models for UAV flight and mission systems

• Collaborate with avionics, control, and simulation engineers

• Design real-time AI inference systems for edge compute modules

• Contribute to mission planning AI, object detection, and threat response logic

What you bring

• 5+ years in AI/ML systems or robotics

• Strong background in reinforcement learning, simulation environments, or autonomous vehicle AI

• Experience with ROS2, C++/Python, and GPU optimization (NVIDIA Jetson or equivalent)

• Familiarity with defense, aerospace, or UAV systems

• Experience with simulation frameworks (AirSim, Gazebo, Isaac Sim).

• Comfort with MLOps (training pipelines, versioning, CI/CD for models).

• Security-first mindset, ability to build resilient systems for contested environments.

Bonus points

• Prior work on swarm robotics or autonomous vehicles.

• Knowledge of ROS2, UAVs, or embedded optimization (ONNX, TensorRT).

• Defense / aerospace background (but not mandatory).

Why join us

• Be part of the founding engineering team — your work defines the future of KRONOS.

• Equity upside: we grow together.

• Work on real missions — from sim → prototype → flight.

• 100% EU-sovereign defense startup: we’re building fast, lean, and for Europe.

💡 If you’re ready to push the boundaries of autonomy and see your work fly — literally — we’d love to talk.