AI operating system for autonomous military and civil aircraft
Merlin builds flight-control software for autonomous aircraft across military and defense programs. The stack is aerospace-native (MATLAB, Simulink, ARINC protocols) paired with modern DevOps (Kubernetes, Terraform, AWS/Azure/GCP), and the company is now adopting ROS—signaling a shift toward modular, standards-based autonomy architectures. Heavy engineering hiring (17 open roles) alongside emerging policy and legal functions reflect the operational reality: they're scaling flight validation and certification in parallel with government regulatory strategy.
Merlin is an aerospace and defense software company founded in 2019 and based in Boston. They develop an AI-powered operating system for autonomous flight that works across multiple aircraft platforms and is designed for both military and civil missions. The product has been validated through hundreds of autonomous flights in test facilities globally. The company has secured $100M+ in awarded contracts from military customers. Operations span simulation and flight-test validation, autonomous decision-making and behavior execution, FAA certification strategy, and human-machine teaming research. Pain points include regulatory navigation, supply-chain continuity, crew-cost reduction, and real-time compute scaling.
Aerospace-grade simulation (MATLAB, Simulink), embedded comms (ARINC 429, RS-232/422/485), CAD tools (SolidWorks, CATIA, Onshape), and cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP with Kubernetes, Terraform). Recently adopting ROS.
Flight-critical autonomy algorithms, human-machine teaming for airborne systems, FAA certification strategy, simulation and flight-test validation, and supply-chain scaling for autonomous aircraft production.
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Merlin's technology stack, projects, and hiring signals are inferred from public hiring and company data — career pages, public listings, and company web presence — then clustered and de-duplicated. Figures are estimates that refresh over time. Read our full methodology →
This is not an official vendor or customer list. It is a technology-adoption signal inferred from public data, intended for B2B research.