Principal Software Engineer, Perception
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Nov 12, 2026. First seen by Alion on Nov 10, 2026.
About the Role
Join the perception team at a maritime autonomy company and set the technical direction for its perception systems. You will help autonomous vehicles interpret complex ocean environments and provide reliable information for safe downstream autonomy.
What You'll Do
Define architecture for sensor fusion, localization, tracking, mapping, and uncertainty estimation.
Integrate radar, cameras, and other sensor modalities into a coherent, reliable information stream.
Partner with autonomy, navigation, and applied machine learning teams to support safe vehicle behavior.
Translate research and advanced algorithms into production systems that meet sensor, compute, latency, and environmental constraints.
Guide technical direction through architecture decisions, reviews, hands-on problem solving, mentorship, and hiring.
Develop data labeling strategies, ground-truth datasets, and evaluation frameworks.
What We're Looking For
At least 8 years of experience in perception or robotics engineering, operating at Staff level or above.
Experience owning 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 mathematical and algorithmic foundations in computer vision, machine learning, and related fields.
Experience with onboard software and running inference on constrained edge compute under latency limits.
Proficiency with C++ and Python; familiarity with Nvidia Jetson, radar, camera systems, SLAM, simulation, and real-time or embedded environments.
Background in robotics, autonomous systems, aerospace, or defense; maritime autonomy and leading perception architecture across platform generations are beneficial.
Must be a U.S. citizen or Green Card holder. Visa sponsorship or transfer is not available.
Compensation & Benefits
Base salary: $300,000 to $380,000 annually. Visa sponsorship is not available.
Location
Hybrid role based in Alameda, United States.