Technical Program Manager, Autonomy

About Merlin:

Merlin (NASDAQ: MRLN) is a publicly traded aerospace and defense company building a non-human pilot to deliver full-stack autonomy for any aircraft from takeoff to touchdown. The Merlin Pilot autonomy system powers a growing range of aircraft and mission profiles and has been proven through hundreds of autonomous flights from Merlin's global flight test facilities, including Kerikeri, New Zealand; Quonset Point, Rhode Island; and soon, Bedford, Massachusetts. Headquartered in Boston, Merlin is expanding its organization to accelerate the development and deployment of its autonomy platform, helping customers solve some of aviation's most pressing challenges, from pilot shortages to improving flight safety. Backed by some of the world's leading investors prior to its public listing, Merlin continues to advance the certification and commercialization of autonomous flight across commercial and defense aviation. 

About You

You are a mission-driven builder who thrives at the intersection of software, autonomy, and execution. As Technical Program Manager, Autonomy at Merlin Labs, you'll drive the development and delivery of the Merlin Pilot — the autonomy software at the core of everything we build. You'll own the execution rhythm of our autonomy release train, from capability definition through simulation, integration, and flight validation.

Embedded within Merlin's autonomy engineering organization, you'll work side-by-side with software engineers, autonomy architects, systems engineers, and product leadership to turn a complex, multi-disciplinary software roadmap into predictable, high-quality releases. You bring genuine technical fluency in software and autonomous systems — you can follow an architecture discussion, understand the dependency chain from perception to planning to flight controls, and recognize when a technical risk threatens a milestone.

This role sits at the heart of Merlin's product: the autonomy stack itself. You'll support a portfolio spanning internally funded R&D and capability commitments to defense and commercial programs. Above all, you believe in the mission: to accelerate autonomy, support the warfighter, and redefine what's possible in aviation.