Founding Aerial Robotics Engineer

Pluton is building an autonomous exploration platform designed to dramatically accelerate the discovery of critical mineral deposits.

Modern mineral exploration remains slow, expensive, and highly manual. Survey teams spend years collecting fragmented datasets across vast terrain regions before a viable deposit can be identified.

Pluton replaces this process with a closed-loop exploration system that integrates: satellite intelligence, aerial robotics, ground robotics, and probabilistic geological modeling.

Our system autonomously identifies exploration targets, deploys sensing platforms to collect geological intelligence, and continuously updates exploration models to guide downstream validation and drilling. The goal is to compress exploration timelines from years to months.

Aerial robotics forms the first sensing layer of this system — rapidly scanning large terrain regions and collecting high-resolution datasets that guide downstream robotic validation and drilling operations.

As Pluton's Founding Aerial Robotics Engineer, you will design and deploy the aerial systems responsible for autonomous mineral exploration.

You will architect aerial platforms capable of operating across remote terrain environments, integrate advanced sensing payloads, and develop autonomy systems that allow drones to autonomously scout exploration regions and collect geological intelligence.

This role spans the full robotics stack: aerial platform development, autonomy and mission systems, sensing and payload integration, simulation and mission validation, real-world field deployment.

You will work directly with the founders and the core robotics team to build the aerial pillar of Pluton's exploration platform. This is a founding engineering role with significant influence over the architecture of the system.

Pluton's aerial systems are responsible for rapidly surveying large exploration regions and collecting sensing data used to guide exploration decisions. These systems must operate in environments characterized by remote terrain, limited infrastructure, and large geographic scale.

The aerial platform generates the first layer of exploration intelligence, feeding datasets into Pluton's probabilistic exploration engine (NOUS), which determines follow-on robotic missions and drilling targets. Your work will define how the system perceives the geological landscape.

Design and deploy Pluton's aerial exploration platform:

• Select and modify drone hardware platforms
• Optimize flight endurance and mission range
• Integrate compute and sensing payloads
• Ensure reliability in rugged terrain environments

Develop autonomous mission capabilities enabling aerial systems to:

• Plan and execute exploration missions across large terrain regions
• Navigate to exploration targets generated by Pluton's exploration engine (NOUS)
• Collect structured sensing datasets for geological modeling
• Dynamically adapt mission paths based on terrain and sensing feedback

Autonomy systems will integrate with Pluton's decision engine to enable closed-loop exploration missions.

Integrate airborne sensing technologies used in mineral exploration:

• Hyperspectral imaging
• LiDAR terrain mapping
• RGB / photogrammetry systems
• Multispectral sensing
• Geospatial and geophysical payloads

These sensors generate datasets used to detect geological signals and guide exploration decisions.

Develop simulation environments to validate aerial missions prior to field deployment:

• Mission simulation and flight path testing
• Sensor modeling and autonomy validation
• Hardware-in-the-loop testing

Simulation environments may include NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Gazebo, and PX4 simulation frameworks.

Lead real-world testing and deployment of aerial systems:

• Flight testing and mission planning
• Field data collection and validation
• Iterating on platform performance based on field results

0–3 Months:

• Evaluate aerial platform architectures
• Build the initial simulation environment
• Integrate baseline sensing payloads
• Conduct early autonomous flight testing

3–6 Months:

• Deploy the first operational exploration drone
• Integrate advanced sensing systems (hyperspectral / LiDAR)
• Connect aerial mission planning with Pluton's exploration engine

6–12 Months:

• Deploy autonomous exploration missions across large terrain regions
• Build scalable aerial sensing pipelines capable of supporting exploration campaigns
• Generate geological intelligence that directly informs downstream robotic validation and drilling

Candidates may come from backgrounds such as: autonomy startups, defense robotics companies, aerial mapping platforms, robotics research labs.

Critical minerals underpin the supply chains of modern civilization. Copper, lithium, rare earth elements, and other strategic materials power energy infrastructure, electric transportation, advanced manufacturing, and computing systems. Yet discovering new mineral deposits remains slow and uncertain.

Pluton is building a system that can autonomously scan large terrain regions, detect mineral signatures from the air, guide robotic validation missions, and dramatically accelerate mineral discovery.

The aerial platform is the first intelligence generator in the system. The engineer who builds it will shape how Pluton sees the earth — and how the world finds the minerals it needs.

Click Apply Now and submit your application directly through our careers page. Along with your resume, please include:

• A brief intro — who you are and why this role interests you
• Links to relevant work — GitHub, projects, publications, or demos
• One example of a robotics, autonomy, or aerial systems project you've built or contributed to

We respond to every application. No recruiters please.