{"id":734579,"url":"https://alion.io/job/xdof-research-engineer","title":"Member of Technical Staff, Research Engineer","company":{"id":686707,"name":"XDOF","domain":"xdof.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/xdof","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":90,"open_postings":23,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.391,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":49,"computed_at":"2026-11-08T05:47:12Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"staff","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Mateo, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":181000,"max_usd":360000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":890},"experience_years_min":3,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Computer Vision","optional":false},{"name":"CUDA","optional":false},{"name":"Docker","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"Localization","optional":false},{"name":"ONNX Runtime","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"SLAM","optional":false},{"name":"TensorFlow","optional":false},{"name":"TensorFlow C++","optional":false},{"name":"TensorRT","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-08T07:22:08Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-08","last_verified_at":"2026-11-08T14:40:56Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":61,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":[],"days_open":61},"description":"Research Engineer\nAt XDOF, we’re at an inflection point. Frontier labs are racing to build general-purpose robots, and high-quality training data is the bottleneck. We’re building the foundation behind the foundation models - the data collection systems, operational capability, exabyte-scale data warehouse, and software toolchain - to help our partners drive the field forward.\nOur research teams move fast and produce breakthrough work, but research code and production code are different things. We’re looking for a Research Engineer to bridge that gap: someone who can read a research prototype, understand it deeply, and turn it into something that runs reliably at scale on real hardware. You can expect to float across teams to wherever the highest-priority needs are, across perception, ML, and data infrastructure.\nWhat You’ll Do\nResearch engineers take prototype code and make it production-grade. Sample projects include:\ntaking a research perception pipeline (pose estimation, SLAM, calibration) and hardening it for reliable, real-time execution on embedded platforms\n\nprofiling and optimizing performance-critical code at the CPU, memory, and GPU level using tools like perf, NSight, and custom microbenchmarks\n\nwriting and debugging CUDA kernels for low-level acceleration of compute-heavy workloads\n\nintegrating research outputs into the production codebase with proper testing, error handling, and observability\n\ncontainerizing and packaging workloads (Docker) so they can be scaled and deployed by the infrastructure team\n\nunderstanding and leveraging the infrastructure team’s orchestration and compute systems to hand off production-ready workloads cleanly\n\nworking with researchers to understand algorithmic intent and make informed tradeoffs between accuracy, latency, and resource usage\n\nAbout You\nBaseline skills:\n3+ years of industry experience in software engineering with a focus on systems, performance, or production ML\n\nstrong C++ proficiency, including modern C++ (C++17/20), memory management, and performance-conscious coding patterns\n\nCUDA programming experience: ability to write, profile, and debug GPU kernels\n\nexperience with CPU performance optimization: profiling, cache behavior, SIMD, latency reduction\n\nproficiency with Python and familiarity with ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow) at the level needed to read and modify research code\n\ncomfort with Linux systems, including build systems, debugging tools, and containerization\n\nYou might be a good fit if you:\nhave taken research or prototype code and shipped it in a production system\n\nhave worked on real-time or embedded systems where latency and resource constraints matter\n\nhave experience with perception, computer vision, or robotics systems\n\nhave optimized model inference for deployment (TensorRT, ONNX Runtime, or similar)\n\nunderstand the full lifecycle from research notebook to containerized, monitored production service\n\nare very comfortable working in 0→1 environments\n\nare mission-driven and passionate about robotics: work at XDOF is fast-paced and constant. We hope you love what you’re going to be doing, because you’ll be doing a lot of it!","description_format":"text","description_chars":3156,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":3,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Robotics AI","AI Training Data & Annotation"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-11T10:41:34Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"adverts_offering_sponsorship_24m":0,"sanctioned_now":false,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 4","filings_12m":4,"filings_prev_12m":0,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":182500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-11-08T10:45:15+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":2}],"liveness":{"score":36,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.814,"p_room":0.44,"age_days":60,"expected_fill_days":49,"reasons":["conf:3","velocity","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-11-08T05:47:12Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/xdof-research-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/xdof-research-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-08T17:28:15Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":36745,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-09T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":686707},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=686707"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fxdof-research-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":2,"usd":0.2},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fxdof-research-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fxdof-research-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/xdof-research-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fxdof-research-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":734579}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"xdof.ai","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":734579},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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