18 jobs for “Drone Pilot”
National Crime Agency Gillingham £47,049 pa
Lead drone pilot for the NCA's Technical Operations unmanned vehicle programme, responsible for flight planning and clearances, piloting a range of UAS and USV platforms, and developing innovative technical surveillance capabilities. The role involves training the drone cadre, engaging with the Civil Aviation Authority and suppliers, and acting as subject matter expert on unmanned vehicles.
Flarebright Bicester £39,000 – £49,000 pa
Contributes across the full development lifecycle, from concept and algorithm design to system integration, testing and troubleshooting of safety-critical navigation and autonomy software in C++. Works with a multidisciplinary team on real-time embedded systems, hardware/software-in-the-loop testing and flight test activities, producing design documentation and test reports.
Matchtech Cambridge £45,000 pa
Lead pilot on complex drone missions across UK infrastructure projects, covering BVLOS, visual mitigation, fixed-wing, survey, LiDAR and inspection operations. Supervises deployed crews, mentors less experienced pilots and develops operational standards, procedures and mission plans. Involves configuring flight controllers, geofences and fail-safes, and analysing flight logs to improve performance.
Anduril Llanbedr
Hands-on role integrating hardware and software onto unmanned aerial systems, including sensors, actuators and control systems, and leading the design, build and test of UAS prototypes. Works with mechanical, software and systems engineers on rapid prototyping, test plans and troubleshooting, using ArduPilot, 3D printing, composites and RC piloting of VTOL and fixed-wing platforms.
ECM Selection Cambridge £90,000 – £130,000 pa
Senior engineer focused on mechanical design for drone detection and tracking systems, solving complex challenges, refining concepts and supporting prototyping in workshop and customer settings. Also involved in PCB-level electronics design, overseeing development and integration with mechanical systems within a small, specialised team.
ECM Selection Cambridge £55,000 – £70,000 pa
Hands-on optical engineering role designing systems with lasers, lenses and cameras, taking products from concept through verification and troubleshooting to production readiness. Works closely with electronics, software and AI colleagues in a multidisciplinary team, integrating optical components with electromechanical systems, ideally using machine learning for machine vision.
Platform Recruitment Saffron Walden £70,000 – £80,000 pa
Design, build and test RF-based systems from concept through to manufacture, working on airborne radars, drone sensors and LSWaP devices for GPS and radar communication. Collaborate with experts and customers to establish requirements, with hybrid working of three days a week in a state-of-the-art lab and R&D facility.
Matchtech Cambridgeshire £350 – £450 pd
Contract CAD engineering role in the aerospace sector, creating accurate 3D geometry from existing designs and CAD data to support specialist UAS sub-module components and assemblies. Day to day involves smooth surface and skeleton modelling in Creo, WINDCHILL data management, the AAX plugin, and liaising with manufacturing facilities for fast-turnaround production of parts such as aerodynamic enclosures and radomes.
Windracers Fareham
Supports the Regulations & Safety team in developing airspace change requests, operational safety cases, SORA and other regulatory submissions, ensuring continued compliance and enabling VLOS and BVLOS operations. Duties include tracking applications, using GIS software to develop airspace structures, coordinating with flight operations, and assisting the Safety Manager with investigations. Suited to a recent graduate or junior aviation professional moving into uncrewed aviation regulation.
Platform Recruitment Cambridge £45,000 – £65,000 pa
Design and develop embedded firmware for advanced radar and sensing systems used in UAV applications. Work across the full product lifecycle in a collaborative, engineering-led environment using C/C++ on STM32 microcontrollers in bare-metal and RTOS environments. Engage in system-level debugging and contribute to software architecture for next-generation sensing technologies.
Helsing London
Designs and runs environmental stress test campaigns on drone sub-systems and ground support equipment, covering vibration, shock, thermal cycling, ingress, salt spray, altitude and fatigue testing. Works as a generalist across hardware domains in the "Physical Reality" test cluster, using strain gauges, accelerometers and DAQ systems to map failure envelopes and validate survivability.
East Anglian Site Engineering Ipswich £32,000 – £45,000 pa
Carry out topographical and measured building surveys, terrestrial laser scanning, and point cloud processing, then produce accurate CAD drawings and survey deliverables. Take ownership of projects from site work through to final output, working independently while liaising with clients and the wider team across East Anglia, initially around Suffolk.
Helsing London
Hands-on role building flight-ready drone prototypes, spanning mechanical design, electrical integration and hardware iteration. You fabricate airframes, wire avionics and power systems, configure PX4/ArduPilot flight controllers, and run field test campaigns, using telemetry to refine CAD models across successive iterations.
Tekever Swindon
Build and run a composites manufacturing capability from scratch for drone airframe structures, covering facility layout, equipment commissioning, pre-preg lay-up, tooling, cure, trim and inspection. Recruit and lead the shop-floor team, own quality, safety and production rate, and transfer best practice across European plants.
Tekever Bristol
Hands-on role integrating third-party and military-grade sensors into autonomous platforms, building adapters and drivers, and developing sensor/data fusion and geolocation pipelines that turn raw detections into reliable tracks. Ships production C++ and Rust with ROS2, tuning Kalman-filter-based tracking against real and synthetic data, and works daily with AI coding assistants.
Callen Lenz Salisbury £50,000 – £60,000 pa
Design and build pixel-perfect, responsive user interfaces for flight control and ground station software, working with React, TypeScript, HTML/CSS and real-time streaming technologies. The role sits in a cross-functional agile team collaborating with UX researchers and designers, contributing to a design system, code reviews and test coverage with Jest, Cypress or RTL.
