Principal Software Engineer, Perception

About the Role

As a principal-level engineer on the perception team at a maritime autonomy company, you will set the technical direction for systems that help autonomous vehicles understand complex ocean environments. You will combine hands-on engineering with architecture leadership, partnering closely with autonomy, navigation, and applied machine learning teams.

What You'll Do

• Define the architecture for perception capabilities including sensor fusion, localization, tracking, mapping, and uncertainty estimation.

• Integrate radar, cameras, and other sensor modalities into reliable information streams for downstream autonomy systems.

• Work with autonomy, navigation, and applied machine learning teams to support safe vehicle behavior in challenging ocean conditions.

• Turn research algorithms into robust production systems that meet edge-compute, latency, sensor, and environmental constraints.

• Guide senior engineers through architecture decisions, technical reviews, and hands-on problem solving.

• Shape data-labeling strategies, ground-truth datasets, and evaluation frameworks, and contribute to hiring and mentorship as the team grows.

What We're Looking For

• At least 8 years of experience in perception or robotics engineering, with staff-level technical leadership and architecture ownership.

• Direct experience building and deploying production perception systems on autonomous vehicles or robots.

• Deep expertise in sensor fusion, localization, state estimation, tracking, mapping, probabilistic estimation, and uncertainty modeling.

• Strong foundations in computer vision, machine learning, and applied mathematics, including linear algebra.

• Experience with onboard software and running inference on constrained compute with latency requirements; familiarity with C++, Python, Nvidia Jetson, and edge computing is valuable.

• Background with radar, cameras, or other sensor modalities; maritime autonomy experience is a plus.

• Experience with real-time operating systems, minimal Linux distributions, battery or power constraints, or active vehicle fleets is beneficial.

• Must be a US Person, meaning a US citizen or Green Card holder. Visa sponsorship or transfer is not available.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary range: $300,000 to $380,000 annually. Visa sponsorship is not available.

Location

Hybrid role based in Alameda, United States.