Principal Software Engineer, Perception
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Nov 14, 2026. First seen by Alion on Nov 13, 2026.
About the Role
Join the perception team at a maritime autonomy company, where you will set technical direction for systems that help autonomous vehicles operate safely in complex ocean environments. You will lead the development of production perception capabilities, from sensor fusion and localization to tracking and uncertainty estimation.
What You'll Do
Define the architecture and technical direction for the perception stack, including sensor fusion, localization, tracking, mapping, and uncertainty estimation.
Integrate radar, cameras, and other sensor modalities into reliable information streams for downstream autonomy.
Partner with autonomy, navigation, and applied machine learning teams to support safe vehicle behavior.
Translate research and algorithms into robust production software that meets edge-compute, latency, sensor, and environmental constraints.
Lead architecture decisions, technical reviews, and hands-on problem solving while mentoring senior and staff engineers.
Guide data labeling, ground-truth dataset development, and evaluation frameworks.
Contribute technical leadership to hiring and help grow the perception team.
What We're Looking For
At least 8 years of experience in perception or robotics engineering, with staff-level technical leadership or equivalent experience.
Direct ownership of 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 related mathematics.
Experience with onboard software and deploying inference workloads on constrained edge compute, including latency-sensitive systems.
Proficiency with C++ and Python; familiarity with Nvidia Jetson, radar, camera systems, and real-time or minimal Linux environments is valuable.
Experience in robotics, autonomous systems, aerospace, or defense; maritime autonomy and leading perception architecture across platform generations are beneficial.
Must be a US 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 in Alameda, United States.