12 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.
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.
Tekever Swindon
Hands-on shop-floor role at a new Swindon drone manufacturing facility, covering goods-in and receiving, stores and inventory control, kitting and line-side feed, and dispatch and shipping. Works closely with Supply Chain, Production Planning & Control, Quality and the electronics and integration cells, using ERP systems, handheld scanners and material-handling equipment to keep physical stock and system records aligned as the site scales.
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.
Rise Technical Recruitment Witney £50,000 – £60,000 pa
Defines verification strategies and develops test frameworks for safety-critical embedded software, delivering requirements-based V&V, traceability and certification evidence. Applies automated testing, fuzz testing, fault injection and Monte Carlo simulation, with exposure to SPARK Ada and formal methods in an autonomy-assurance team. Hybrid, minimum three days on-site in Witney.
Rise Technical Recruitment Witney £50,000 – £60,000 pa
Define verification strategies and build test frameworks for safety-critical embedded software used in flight-critical control and mission-assurance systems. Work spans requirements-based V&V, traceability, certification evidence and advanced techniques such as automated testing, fuzz testing, fault injection and Monte Carlo simulation, with three days a week on-site in Witney.
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.
Tekever Swindon
Hands-on build role assembling, integrating and testing Unmanned Aerial System airframes and sub-systems, covering structural work such as bracketry, precision drilling and fastening plus avionics wiring, flight control and sensor installation. Also involves ground tests, fault diagnosis and completing certification and traceability records to ISO 9001/AS9100 standards within a manufacturing operations team.
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.
