Senior Staff Perception Engineer
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 15, 2026. First seen by Alion on Oct 14, 2026. Boston Dynamics scores B on the Alion truth index.
We are seeking a Senior Staff Perception Engineer to join our Stretch PerML (Perception and Machine Learning) team. Our team builds and maintains systems that enable the Stretch robot to intelligently manipulate objects in its warehouse environments.
As a Senior Staff Perception Engineer, you will set the technical direction for Stretch's perception stack. You will own key perception pipelines (e.g. object detection, tracking, state estimation) and drive the architecture, development, and maintenance. You will provide mentorship and technical leadership to help guide the team towards best practices in building reliable, robust, and maintainable perception systems to tackle the hardest challenges in the warehouse. This is an individual contributor role with significant technical leadership and influence beyond the immediate team.
What You'll Do:
- Set technical direction: Define perception systems architecture, delivering solutions that meet customer needs and achieve performance and reliability goals.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with controls, manipulation, software, hardware, and product teams to define requirements and integrate perception systems onto the robot.
- Operational Excellence: Champion best practices, including first-principles thinking, robust testing, code reviews, performance analysis, and real-time system design. Mentor junior engineers at all levels within the team.
We're Looking For:
- 10+ years of industry experience (or 8+ with an MS, or 6+ with a PhD) building perception systems, including shipping software on-robot.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Robotics or related field.
- Deep expertise in point cloud processing, tracking and filtering, state estimation, SLAM, and sensor calibration perception algorithms.
- Track record of technical leadership owing technical projects, setting direction, collaboration across teams for a robotics or related domain.
- Strong C++ and Python skills in production environments
- Experience diagnosing and improving system performance using real-world data
Nice to Have:
- Experience with real-time or latency-constrained systems and edge compute
- Background in warehouse, logistics, or manipulation applications
- Practical experience working with deep learning models for computer vision applications
We are interested in all qualified candidates eligible to work in the United States. However, we are not able to sponsor visas for this position.
The base pay range for this position is between $150,000 to $190,000 annually. Base pay will depend on multiple individualized factors including, but not limited to internal equity, job related knowledge, skills and experience. This range represents a good faith estimate of compensation at the time of posting. Boston Dynamics offers a generous Benefits package including medical, dental vision, 401(k), paid time off and an annual bonus structure. Additional details regarding these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer for employment.