Senior Robotic Software Engineer, Navigation

About this role:

Pickle is seeking a dynamic, driven Senior Software Engineer, Navigation, to enhance the speed and safety of our autonomous mobile robots. If you are experienced with and passionate about navigation and controls algorithms for mobile robots, and thrive on solving real-world robotics challenges, we’d love to hear from you.

What You’ll Accomplish:

• Lead a team of engineers to design and optimize navigation and mobility controls algorithms to enhance the speed and safety of our autonomous mobile robot.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate your contributions into the broader hardware and software system.
• Play a key role in designing and contributing to the architecture of scalable software systems that support the deployment of multiple robots in diverse and dynamic environments.
• Act as a mentor to other software engineers to improve the team’s overall capabilities in planning and control

Who You Are:

• A software engineer with over 5 years of experience or a Master's Degree or higher with 3 years of experience working in robotics environments.
• Industry experience developing navigation algorithms for mobile robots is required.
• Proficient in Python. Experience with C++ is a strong plus.
• Experienced with motion planning and controls for robotics systems, with a strong understanding of navigation systems and non-holonomic mobile robots.
• A deep understanding of robot kinematics and dynamics is required.
• Experience with graph search methods for planning, such as A*, RRT, and/or PRM is required.
• Experience with mathematical optimization techniques, including convex optimization and nonlinear programming, is required.
• Experience with trajectory optimization and/or model-predictive control is a strong plus.
• Experience with collision avoidance and autonomous recovery behaviors is a strong plus
• Experience with mathematical optimization for motion planning is strongly preferred.
• Experience with machine learning techniques for motion planning, such as behavior cloning and diffusion policies, is a strong plus.
• Experience with control algorithms for mobile robots, such as PID, Pure Pursuit, and/or LQR is required
• Experienced with shipping and supporting navigation features for a fleet of mobile robots
• Experienced in leading a team of engineers through a Scrum process is preferred.
• Collaborative and communicative, focusing discussions on problem-solving ideas and experiments to drive product innovation.
• Experienced in working with complex algorithms and capable of optimizing for performance and reliability.
• Detail-oriented, but with a system-level mindset. Capable of debugging complex problems while maintaining system integrity.
• Willing to work in the office from our Charlestown, MA location at least three days per week.