Application Guide

How to Apply for Senior Autonomy Data Infrastructure and Analytics Software Engineer

at Joby Aviation

🏢 About Joby Aviation

Joby Aviation is pioneering the future of urban air mobility with electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. As a leader in eco-friendly aviation, we are building a quiet, fast, and safe transportation network. Working here means contributing to a transformative technology that reduces carbon emissions and redefines personal travel.

About This Role

This role is at the intersection of autonomy and data infrastructure, where you will design and build the systems that ingest, store, and analyze petabytes of flight and simulation data from our autonomous aircraft fleet. Your work will directly enable engineers to derive insights, validate performance, and accelerate the development of safe autonomous flight capabilities.

💡 A Day in the Life

A typical day might start with reviewing performance metrics of overnight data ingestion pipelines, then collaborating with autonomy engineers to define new data schemas for a sensor upgrade. After lunch, you might dive into C++ code to optimize a query engine for faster replay of flight logs, and end the day by mentoring a junior engineer on best practices for distributed data processing.

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🎯 Who Joby Aviation Is Looking For

  • You have 5+ years of experience architecting large-scale distributed systems, with a focus on high-frequency, high-cardinality time series data pipelines.
  • You are deeply proficient in Python and C++, and comfortable operating in a Linux environment with Git-based workflows.
  • You have hands-on experience processing sensor data from autonomous platforms (e.g., GPS, IMU, Lidar, Radar) and understand the challenges of high-bandwidth sensor ingestion.
  • You are passionate about building self-serve evaluation platforms and analytics tools that empower engineering teams to run massive batch jobs and derive actionable insights.

📝 Tips for Applying to Joby Aviation

1

Highlight specific projects where you designed and operated data pipelines for high-frequency time series data (e.g., from autonomous vehicles, robotics, or IoT).

2

Demonstrate your experience with C++ and Python by linking to relevant open-source contributions or describing performance-critical code you've written.

3

Emphasize your ability to build scalable batch evaluation systems—mention any experience with job schedulers, workflow orchestration, or large-scale data processing frameworks.

4

Tailor your resume to include metrics: data volume, throughput, latency, and system uptime. Joby values quantifiable impact.

5

Research Joby's autonomy stack and mention how your background aligns with their specific sensor suite and data challenges.

✉️ What to Emphasize in Your Cover Letter

['Your passion for autonomous systems and sustainable aviation, linking your infrastructure expertise to enabling safe flight.', 'Concrete examples of building large-scale data pipelines for time-series or sensor data, with emphasis on scalability and reliability.', "Your experience with C++/Python and how you've used them to optimize data ingestion or analytics performance.", "A clear understanding of the role's impact: enabling engineering teams to self-serve evaluations and accelerate development cycles."]

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🔍 Research Before Applying

To stand out, make sure you've researched:

  • → Study Joby's aircraft design and sensor suite (e.g., lidar, cameras, radar) to understand the data modalities you'll handle.
  • → Read Joby's engineering blog or any public talks about their autonomy stack and data infrastructure challenges.
  • → Familiarize yourself with the eVTOL industry regulations and how data is used for certification and safety cases.
  • → Look into Joby's partnerships and test flight milestones to gauge the company's progress and scale.

💬 Prepare for These Interview Topics

Based on this role, you may be asked about:

1 Design a data ingestion pipeline for a fleet of 100 aircraft, each generating 1 TB/hour of sensor data. Discuss schema design, storage backend, and query performance.
2 How would you build an evaluation platform that allows engineers to run thousands of batch jobs daily? Consider job scheduling, resource management, and result aggregation.
3 Explain your approach to handling data quality and trustworthiness in a high-frequency, high-cardinality time series system.
4 Describe a time you optimized a C++ or Python data processing component for latency or throughput. What trade-offs did you make?
5 How would you design a system to correlate flight data from multiple sensors (GPS, IMU, Lidar) and produce a unified metric for autonomy performance?
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⚠️ Common Mistakes to Avoid

  • Submitting a generic application that doesn't mention autonomy, sensor data, or time series—showing you haven't read the job description carefully.
  • Focusing only on data analytics (e.g., BI dashboards) without emphasizing infrastructure and pipeline architecture.
  • Ignoring the requirement for C++ proficiency—many autonomy infrastructure roles require low-level optimization, so downplaying this skill can hurt your candidacy.

📅 Application Timeline

This position is open until filled. However, we recommend applying as soon as possible as roles at mission-driven organizations tend to fill quickly.

Typical hiring timeline:

1

Application Review

1-2 weeks

2

Initial Screening

Phone call or written assessment

3

Interviews

1-2 rounds, usually virtual

✓

Offer

Congratulations!

Ready to Apply?

Good luck with your application to Joby Aviation!

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