# State Estimation & Navigation Lead at Neros Technologies > United States · Staff · Other · open. Source: https://alderhq.app/jobs/greenhouse%3Anerostechnologies%3A5230346007 (read 2026-11-06). ## Facts (observed) - Company: [Neros Technologies](https://alderhq.app/companies/neros-technologies) - Location text: Torrance, California, United States; HQ - Where it can be done from (inferred): United States (evidence: "Location: Torrance, California, United States; HQ") - Posted: 2026-09-08 (58 days ago) - First seen by alder: 2026-11-02 · last verified: 2026-11-04 - Reposted: 0 times · edited: 0 times - Apply on the employer's site: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/nerostechnologies/jobs/5230346007 - Skills listed (inferred): Python, C++ ## Pay and sponsorship - Posted pay: not posted - Market band for similar posted roles (United States, n 2439): p25 $140k, median $178k, p75 $220k ## Description (the employer's text) ### Who we are Neros is a defense technology company rebuilding America’s drone industrial base. We design and manufacture high-performance unmanned systems that are tested in combat, iterated at startup speed, and built at massive scale. Our team culture is fast, hands-on, and obsessed with closing the gap between design and deployment. As drones transform the character of warfare, Neros is delivering the systems the West needs to compete on the modern battlefield and deter the adversaries of democracy. We’re hiring engineers, operators, and builders who want to move fast, take on extreme ownership, and get capability into the hands of warfighters in months, not years. ### What you will be doing The State Estimation and Navigation Lead owns the team responsible for determining vehicle state and target state onboard Neros aircraft, along with the uncertainty attached to each. This team delivers the estimate that guidance, control, and mission behavior are built on, and its accuracy directly bounds the performance of the autonomy stack. You will lead a small team of state estimation and navigation engineers while remaining hands on in the estimator itself, delivering GPS denied navigation across multiple platforms in active development and defining how estimation performance is measured across the autonomy organization. - Own the technical roadmap for onboard state estimation and navigation, and the interface this team delivers to guidance and control, including vehicle state, target state, and calibrated uncertainty - Architect, implement, and field GPS denied and GPS degraded navigation to a bounded and measured accuracy specification, fusing IMU, vision, GNSS, and other onboard sensing on embedded compute - Lead the development of visual inertial and terrain relative navigation from prototype through fielded capability across multiple aircraft - Define and enforce the standard for characterizing estimation uncertainty and reporting autonomy reliability, including validation in simulation, dataset replay, hardware in the loop, and flight test - Hire, manage, and mentor state estimation and navigation engineers, and set the technical bar through design and code review on the estimation path - Partner with perception, guidance and control, platform software, and hardware teams on sensing, compute, latency, and calibration requirements, and support flight test and field deployment of the estimation stack ### You should have the following - 5+ years of professional experience in state estimation, navigation, sensor fusion, or GNC for robotics, aerospace, autonomous vehicles, or defense systems, including experience leading engineers as a manager or technical lead - Demonstrated ownership of a state estimation or navigation system taken from architecture through deployment on production hardware, not simulation alone - Deep expertise in estimation theory and its practical application, including EKF, UKF, error state or invariant filters, and factor graph or sliding window smoothing, along with the observability reasoning behind selecting among them - Hands on experience fusing IMU, camera, GNSS, and range or altimetry sensing, including calibration, time synchronization, latency compensation, bias modeling, and outlier rejection - Experience delivering navigation performance in GPS denied or GPS degraded environments - Strong C++ and Python, with experience implementing real time algorithms under embedded compute, memory, and latency constraints - A track record of quantitative validation, including defining accuracy, drift, and consistency metrics and building the simulation, dataset replay, hardware in the loop, and flight test workflows that measure them - Experience debugging estimation failures on real hardware in the field and converting them into reproducible regression tests - Strong foundations in linear algebra, probability, and numerical optimization ### Nice to Have - Experience with visual inertial odometry or terrain relative navigation delivered as a fielded capability rather than a research result --- Data: alder (https://alderhq.app). Cite https://alderhq.app/jobs/greenhouse%3Anerostechnologies%3A5230346007 and the date you read it. Observed facts come from the employer's own listing; location reach, level, family and skills are inferences.