Autonomy Engineer Intern, Infrastructure, Systems and Tools (2027)

About the role

Skydio, a drone company focused on autonomous flight, is looking for an Autonomy Engineer Intern in Zurich for 2027. As a research intern you will work alongside core software developers and own a project that advances the capabilities of the team's computer vision and deep learning algorithms. The internship is paid at $47 per hour for undergraduates, $53 for masters students and $70 for PhD students.

Key responsibilities

• Design and build replay and analysis systems so engineers can inspect and reproduce recorded autonomy behavior with fine-grained control over state, perception outputs and decisions.
• Develop infrastructure for automated testing and failure triage, expanding simulation and log-driven test coverage and speeding up root-cause analysis.
• Define APIs, data contracts and performance requirements at the interface between autonomy software and robotics middleware, and support downstream teams in integrating them.
• Build developer tools that support reliable, performant and usable iteration, and take ownership of internal services from concept through deployment and monitoring.
• Contribute to the long-term roadmap for developer tools that improve debugging, test coverage and system understanding.

Required profile

• Strong foundation in math, theory and software development.
• Interest in contributing to autonomy algorithms and bringing them into real products.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment where requirements and priorities change.

Required skills

• C++ and Python, with a grasp of performance-sensitive and multi-threaded systems.
• Experience with simulation frameworks, time-synchronized data systems or state-machine-driven applications.
• Familiarity with structured data visualization, log processing or developer tooling design.
• Bonus: robotics, aerospace or automotive experience; exposure to robotics, simulation or physics engines; telemetry or log pipelines; front-end skills such as React, TypeScript or Three.js; familiarity with distributed systems or cloud-hosted services.