Software Engineer - Autonomous Air System V&V at Helsing · Berlin

Who we are

Helsing is a defence AI company. Our mission is to protect our democracies. We aim to achieve technological leadership, so that open societies can continue to make sovereign decisions and control their ethical standards.

As democracies, we believe we have a special responsibility to be thoughtful about the development and deployment of powerful technologies like AI. We take this responsibility seriously.

We are an ambitious and committed team of engineers, AI specialists and customer-facing programme managers. We are looking for mission-driven people to join our European teams – and apply their skills to solve the most complex and impactful problems. We embrace an open and transparent culture that welcomes healthy debates on the use of technology in defence, its benefits, and its ethical implications.

The role

Our Autonomous Air System V&V team builds the simulation and validation environments that enable rigorous testing of autonomous air systems before they ever leave the ground. We develop Software-in-the-Loop (SiL) and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) environments that allow engineers to integrate, test, and assure AI-driven capabilities against virtualised and representative hardware.

We build software that is subject to significant and unorthodox technical constraints, must operate in a wide variety of constantly-changing environments, and has to support an ever-growing list of challenging use-cases. What we build ultimately ends up in the hands of real people in high-risk, high-stress situations – from mission planning to command and control (C2) and mission debrief – so must be both reliable and frictionless.

Taken together, this brings a whole host of interesting backend engineering challenges across a wide variety of fields that you'll help us solve. To give some examples:

• Simulation frameworks (e.g., high-fidelity SiL/HiL environments, real-time and deterministic simulation)
• Test automation (e.g., fault injection, automated test coverage, regression testing at scale)
• Hardware-software integration (e.g., testing against representative hardware, sensor and actuator interfaces)
• Real-time and high-performance computing (e.g., concurrency, low-latency execution, profiling and optimization)
• Distributed systems (e.g., orchestrating complex multi-component test environments)
• Deployment infrastructure (e.g., air-gapped devices and heterogeneous test rigs)
• Machine learning (e.g., systems for testing and validating AI/ML model behaviour)

In several of these areas, we are working near the state-of-the-art; we actively read (and sometimes implement) research papers, and often need to push even further to make theory work in practice. In others, we are applying well-known techniques to real-world situations (with real-world limitations) that have never been used in before, which requires skill, diligence, and honing a deep understanding of the underlying technologies.

The day-to-day

• Review code contributions, proposals, and RFCs from colleagues. At Helsing we strongly believe that unblocking others takes precedence over spending more time on your own work.
• Design and develop modules in simulation and validation frameworks, writing high-performance Rust code for simulators and test infrastructure.
• Build tools for automated test coverage, fault injection, and regression testing to ensure comprehensive validation of autonomous systems.
• Work closely with autonomy and systems teams to capture requirements and ensure simulation environments accurately represent real-world conditions.
• Debug and profile simulation performance, identifying bottlenecks and optimizing for speed, determinism, and fidelity.
• Propose and implement new features, capabilities, algorithms, infrastructure, or even full products across our stack. We encourage our engineers to look beyond their immediate team for missed opportunities, and to speak up when they identify one.
• Become a mentor, find a mentee, and help support and develop our interviewing pipeline. The people make or break the company, and we want as many engineers as possible to be part of fostering and growing the organisation.
• Share your experience and technical know-how with other Helsingers. We host tech talks, get together for smaller "let's learn together" groups, run topical office hours (e.g., on Rust), etc. to help each other get better with time.
• Maintain our existing software stack, including working with internal and external customers to identify issues, improving operational reliability and performance, and fending off technical debt. The stack is primarily Rust and Python.
• Maintain documentation and testing infrastructure, ensuring that our simulation environments are well-documented and accessible to other teams.
• Further develop our tests and benchmarks, both at the micro and macro level. We operate in a domain where robustness is of the utmost importance, and an extensive and ever-improving test suite is key to achieving that. And without thorough benchmarks, we would be flying blind.
• Present your work at our weekly demo sessions. We want engineers to come together around what they are working on and to feel like they are not endlessly squirreling away at something that doesn't matter. To that end, we host (and actively work towards) demo sessions that allow early feedback, celebration of progress, and a better shared understanding of everything that goes on at Helsing.

You should apply if you

• Write modern, maintainable Rust.
• Have experience in simulation, testing, robotics frameworks or autonomous driving.
• Are comfortable with complex systems and concurrency.
• Care about reliability, performance, and safety.
• Enjoy working on the interface between software and hardware.
• Are motivated by fast feedback loops and real impact.
• Can write legible, maintainable, and performant code.
• Communicate well in English, both verbally and in writing.
• Enjoy collaborating with others, including reviewing code and pair programming.
• Are comfortable working asynchronously (writing PRs and RFCs, having discussions by email).
• Strive to improve yourself, your peers, and the culture you work in over time.
• Feel like ethical considerations are an inherent part of engineering.

Note: We operate at an intersection where women, as well as other minority groups, are systematically under-represented. We encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet all the listed qualifications; ability and impact cannot be summarised in a few bullet points.

Nice to have

• Aerospace or automotive background.
• Software/Hardware-in-the-loop or simulation experience.
• Experience building test rigs or ground-based integration systems.
• Knowledge of flight dynamics or control systems.
• Exposure to AI/ML systems testing.
• Container-based and cloud-native application architectures (e.g., Docker, Azure, AWS).
• Metrics tooling (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK).
• Production ML systems.

Join Helsing and work with world-leading experts in their fields

• Helsing’s work is important. You’ll be directly contributing to the protection of democratic countries while balancing both ethical and geopolitical concerns.
• The work is unique. We operate in a domain that has highly unusual technical requirements and constraints, and where robustness, safety, and ethical considerations are vital. You will face unique Engineering and AI challenges that make a meaningful impact in the world.
• Our work frequently takes us right up to the state of the art in technical innovation, be it reinforcement learning, distributed systems, generative AI, or deployment infrastructure. The defence industry is entering the most exciting phase of the technological development curve. Advances in our field of world are not incremental: Helsing is part of, and often leading, historic leaps forward.
• In our domain, success is a matter of order-of-magnitude improvements and novel capabilities. This means we take bets, aim high, and focus on big opportunities. Despite being a relatively young company, Helsing has already been selected for multiple significant government contracts.
• We actively encourage healthy, proactive, and diverse debate internally about what we do and how we choose to do it. Teams and individual engineers are trusted (and encouraged) to practise responsible autonomy and critical thinking, and to focus on outcomes, not conformity. At Helsing you will have a say in how we (and you!) work, the opportunity to engage on what does and doesn’t work, and to take ownership of aspects of our culture that you care deeply about.

What we offer

• A focus on outcomes, not time-tracking
• Competitive compensation and VSOP options
• Relocation support
• Social and education allowances
• Regular company events and all-hands to bring together employees as one team across Europe

Helsing is an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability or gender identity. Please do not submit personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, data concerning your health, or data concerning your sexual orientation.