---
title: 'Mission Operator - UAV at Scout AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/mission-operator-uav-scout-ai-paso-robles-3nfpevdqc4m9'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Mission Operator - UAV at Scout AI

- **Company:** Scout AI
- **Location:** Paso Robles, CA
- **Compensation:** $85k–$155k
- **Posted:** 2026-08-07
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/scoutai/jobs/5382375008

## Job description

The future of defense will be decided by those who field intelligent machines at scale. At Scout AI, we’re developing Fury, the first robotic foundation model for defense, to give U.S. forces overwhelming, adaptable, and autonomous power across every domain. Fury enables human operators to command fleets of robots through natural language, and empowers those machines to sense, decide, and act together as one. This mission will ask everything of us: urgency, precision, and relentless work.

## The Role

We're hiring a UAV Mission Operator to lead the drone side of our Mission Operations team, Swarm Forge: our AI mission commander, directing a swarm of smaller drones to search, identify, and strike with minimal human input.

You'll lead the drone operator team, own the flight test pipeline, and run the live customer demonstrations to ensure systems are prepared for both internal testing and external deployment.

You'll work in close partnership with our Flight Test Engineer: the Flight Test Engineer owns the technical depth of test design and instrumentation, and you own execution, the team, and everything customer-facing. Together you decide what gets tested, in what order, and what engineering hears back.

## Responsibilities

- Lead and schedule the drone operator team day to day
- Partner with the Flight Test Engineer to drive product development on the air platform — shaping test priorities, splitting execution, and turning results into engineering asks
- Own execution of Development Test Requests and flight test plans across the Ax4, Archer, and Neros fleet, working directly with engineering on results and next steps
- Validate new software, model, and orchestrator releases in flight, and catch regressions before they reach a customer or a demo
- Plan and run customer- and investor-facing drone demonstrations, including live-fly events and vendor days
- Own customer training and support, including training Army and customer personnel on Scout's drone systems
- Track fleet readiness and maintenance across the UAS fleet
- Coordinate airspace deconfliction and hold the safety line on every flight operation
- Feed structured feedback on flight behavior, hardware issues, and software bugs back to engineering daily

## Qualifications

- Hands-on UAS/drone operations experience — piloting, mission planning, or direct oversight of drone operations
- 3+ years of experience operating, maintaining, or testing unmanned aerial systems (UAS), drones, or similar platforms
- Demonstrated team leadership, not just individual flying or engineering
- Comfortable working directly with engineers daily — triaging bugs, validating builds, giving feedback specific enough to act on
- Able to co-own product development with a technical peer
- Experience running live demonstrations or training sessions for military or customer stakeholders
- Strong organizational skills — able to build a schedule, a readiness tracker, and a team rhythm where none exists yet
- Working knowledge of drone safety procedures, airspace coordination, and incident reporting
- Must be a U.S. Person due to required access to U.S. export controlled information or facilities
- Passion about defense of the United States and its allies
- May be expected to obtain and hold a U.S. Top Secret security clearance

## Why Join Scout

- Work on the world’s most important frontier, ensuring U.S. and allied dominance in the age of intelligent machines
- Be a core part of a team building the first defense-specific robotic foundation model
- Collaborate with some of the top engineers in autonomy, AI, and national security
- See your work deployed on real systems
- Help define the future of intelligent defense systems
- Backed by Draper Associates, Booz Allen Ventures, and other top investors

## Benefits

- Competitive base salary and bonus
- Meaningful equity
- Premium medical, dental, and vision plans with $0 paycheck contribution
- Competitive PTO and company holiday calendar
- Catered lunch daily and fully stocked kitchen
- EV charging
- Relocation assistance (depending on role eligibility)

The stated salary range below represents an estimated base pay only and reflects consideration of multiple compensation factors. Final salary offers may differ depending on factors including, but not limited to, relevant experience or training background, specialized skills, and business needs. Most full-time positions also include highly competitive equity awards, which form part of Scout AI's overall compensation package. In addition, Scout AI provides comprehensive, top-tier benefits to full-time employees.

US Salary Range $85,000—$155,000 USD

## About Scout AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Scout AI builds Fury, the first foundation model for defense robotics, enabling intelligent, autonomous unmanned systems for the U.S. military and its allies.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Funding: Series A at $100M)
- **Headquarters**: Sunnyvale, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Colby Adcock (CEO) and Collin Otis (CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Defense and Space Manufacturing
- **Target customers**: U.S. Department of Defense, allied forces, defense contractors (B2G / B2B)
- **Mission**: “Enable the largest robot army in the world for the good guys” – a Silicon Valley values-driven approach to AI for national security.

## Products & Services
- **[Fury](https://scoutco.ai/)**: A multimodal Vision-Language-Action foundation model that turns any uncrewed platform (ground, air, sea, space) into an intelligent, collaborative teammate. Key capabilities:
  - Operates in real time in GPS-denied and communications-denied environments with no cloud dependency.
  - Uses only passive sensors (RGB or thermal camera); no LIDAR or radar required.
  - Supports natural language commands (voice, text, map inputs) and robot-to-robot communication for swarm coordination.
  - Built entirely on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware for low-cost, high-rate manufacturing.
  - Self-improving at the tactical edge through imitation learning and simulation.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed.
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of **$115M** – Seed round ($15M, April 2025) and Series A ($100M, April 2026) [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/scout-ai-official).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Booz Allen Ventures, Align Ventures, **Draper Associates** (Series A lead), Perot Jain. Growing network of defense ecosystem partners [scoutco.ai/company](https://scoutco.ai/company).
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew **192.9% YoY** to 30 employees (as of mid-2026). 23 active job postings across AI, robotics, mission operations, and business development. Strong talent inflow from Anduril, Google, Kodiak, and U.S. Army [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/scout-ai-official) | [greenhouse.io](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/scoutai).

## Competitive Advantages
- **First‑of‑its‑kind foundation model for defense robotics (Fury)** – not a narrow autonomy stack but a generalizable, multi-domain AI brain.
- **Hardware‑agnostic** – works with existing platforms and COTS components, enabling rapid integration without proprietary hardware lock-in.
- **Low‑power, passive sensing** – requires only a single camera stream, minimizing cost, weight, and electronic signature.
- **Natural language swarm coordination** – one operator can command fleets of heterogeneous robots, turning the current 1:1 operator‑robot ratio into a 1:many force multiplier.
- **Edge‑native design** – fully autonomous operation without connectivity, cloud, or GPS.

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling Fury across all domains (ground, air, sea, space) and expanding partnerships with defense primes.
- Building out high‑rate, low‑cost manufacturing pipelines using COTS hardware.
- Aggressively hiring AI researchers, robotics engineers, and mission operators to maintain technology leadership.
- Positioning the U.S. and its allies to outpace adversaries (e.g., China) in robotic autonomy.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission‑driven**: Work on “the world’s most important frontier” – AI for national defense, with a stated commitment to democratic values.
- **Early‑stage rocket ship**: 192% YoY headcount growth; employees have direct impact on a small, lean team (30 people).
- **Culture**: Engineering‑heavy (32% technical headcount), with talent from top defense tech (Anduril, Kodiak), big tech (Google), and the military.
- **Work model**: On‑site in Sunnyvale, CA (HQ) and Paso Robles, CA (test & operations). Hybrid/remote limited – most roles are location‑specific.
- **Hot roles**: AI Engineers, AI Researchers, Robotics Software Engineers, Mission Operators (drone/ground systems), and Business Development for air dominance [greenhouse.io](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/scoutai).

## Sources
1. [scoutco.ai](https://scoutco.ai/) – company homepage, technology overview
2. [scoutco.ai/company](https://scoutco.ai/company) – mission, leadership, funding, partners
3. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/scout-ai-official) – headcount, growth, financials, talent sources
4. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/scout-ai-scoutcoai) – company culture, perks, job listings
5. [greenhouse.io](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/scoutai) – active job postings (23 roles)

## Other roles at Scout AI

- [Senior Mechanical Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-mechanical-engineer-scout-ai-sunnyvale-be8f8aqbcec4) — Sunnyvale, CA
- [Drone Technician](https://feeny.ai/job/drone-technician-scout-ai-sunnyvale-a2t93vt0b5qk) — Sunnyvale, CA
- [Manufacturing Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/manufacturing-engineer-scout-ai-sunnyvale-n6es17h6swqx) — Sunnyvale, CA
- [Senior Embedded Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-embedded-software-engineer-scout-ai-sunnyvale-6mzt9hkp6k76) — Sunnyvale, CA
- [Mechanical Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/mechanical-engineer-scout-ai-sunnyvale-y9xbcktdjer7) — Sunnyvale, CA
- [GTM Senior Program Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/gtm-senior-program-manager-scout-ai-sunnyvale-california-7es52hv9gwga) — Sunnyvale California, United States
- [Staff Software Engineer, Agent Harnessing](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-agent-harnessing-scout-ai-us-sunnyvale-xpeb1agamx5m) — US Sunnyvale, CA
- [Senior IT Systems Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-it-systems-engineer-scout-ai-sunnyvale-8bedy1s9fyv8) — Sunnyvale, CA
- [Vehicle Integration Technician](https://feeny.ai/job/vehicle-integration-technician-scout-ai-sunnyvale-california-ydhss2kymh0x) — Sunnyvale California, United States
- [Senior AI Researcher](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-ai-researcher-scout-ai-us-sunnyvale-zqbb607t3a7q) — US Sunnyvale, CA