Staff AI Perception Engineer

Staff AI Perception Engineer (Full-Time)Location: Fremont, CA — Hybrid (2 days onsite / 3 days remote)Compensation: $180K–$280K base, depending on experience + Equity + Full BenefitsNo C2C CandidatesAbout the OpportunityWe are partnering with a rapidly growing robotics company developing intelligent robotic systems for real-world industrial and automation environments. The organization is building advanced autonomous systems that combine AI, computer vision, 3D perception, robotics software, and manipulation to solve complex physical-world problems.The team is seeking a Staff AI Perception Engineer to take significant technical ownership of its production perception capabilities. This position will focus heavily on 3D computer vision, object localization, pose estimation, scene understanding, sensor data, and real-time deployment on robotic hardware.This is a senior, hands-on individual contributor role for someone who can bridge advanced perception research with production robotics. The ideal candidate has experience taking perception technology beyond prototypes and deploying it successfully on physical robotic systems operating in dynamic, real-world environments.The RoleYou will help define the technical direction and architecture of a production-grade AI perception platform while remaining deeply involved in hands-on engineering.The role requires an engineer who understands that successful robotics perception involves more than achieving strong model accuracy. You will evaluate tradeoffs involving performance, reliability, inference speed, compute limitations, data quality, system complexity, maintainability, and product delivery requirements.As a Staff-level engineer, you will also provide technical leadership across projects, participate in architecture and design decisions, mentor other engineers, troubleshoot difficult production issues, and collaborate closely with teams working across autonomy, manipulation, planning, controls, and core robotics software.What You'll DoLead the technical direction of key AI and perception initiatives while remaining hands-on with development, integration, testing, and production debugging.Architect and improve production-grade 3D perception systems used by physical robots operating in real-world environments.Develop perception pipelines involving 3D object localization, pose estimation, segmentation, scene understanding, and environmental reconstruction.Work with RGB-D cameras, depth sensing, point clouds, and other robotic sensing modalities.Optimize perception algorithms and models for deployment on onboard robotic compute with strict latency and runtime requirements.Translate promising research approaches into reliable, maintainable production systems.Make engineering decisions that balance model performance with compute resources, robustness, data requirements, scalability, and delivery schedules.Partner with robotics engineers across planning, manipulation, controls, autonomy, and systems engineering to ensure perception performs reliably as part of the complete robotic system.Lead technical and architectural reviews and help establish engineering best practices.Mentor engineers and provide technical guidance on complex perception and robotics problems.Diagnose performance and reliability issues occurring on deployed robotic systems.Help shape the longer-term roadmap for perception, computer vision, and AI capabilities. Required QualificationsMS or PhD in Robotics, Computer Vision, Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a closely related technical discipline.5+ years of professional experience developing AI, computer vision, or robotic perception systems.Proven experience taking perception technology from research, prototype, or early development into production and real-world deployment.Strong experience making architecture and system-design decisions for complex perception or robotics systems.Ability to balance advanced technical approaches with practical constraints involving reliability, compute resources, maintainability, and delivery timelines.Demonstrated technical leadership through architecture ownership, design reviews, mentorship, technical direction, or cross-functional engineering initiatives.Strong hands-on engineering capabilities and willingness to remain deeply involved in implementation and debugging. Highly Desired ExperienceStrong understanding of 3D geometry, coordinate systems, camera models, and camera calibration.Experience working with RGB-D cameras, depth data, LiDAR, point clouds, or other 3D sensing technologies.Experience developing systems involving 3D object detection/localization, segmentation, pose estimation, tracking, or scene reconstruction.Experience deploying AI or computer vision workloads onto robotic or edge-compute platforms.Background integrating perception with motion planning, manipulation, autonomy, controls, or other robotics subsystems.Experience working with physical robots where perception performance directly affects system reliability and task completion.Experience with robotics operating in industrial, logistics, manufacturing, or similarly unstructured real-world environments.Previous experience helping hire, mentor, lead, or grow a technical engineering team is a plus. Why This OpportunityThis is an opportunity to work on robotics technology that moves beyond research and simulation into real-world production deployments.The engineering team has a strong technical and research foundation, but the focus is practical: building robotic systems capable of performing reliably outside controlled laboratory environments.You'll have the opportunity to:Own technically significant portions of a production robotics platform.Influence architecture and the long-term perception roadmap.Work at the intersection of AI, computer vision, 3D perception, robotics, and autonomous systems.See your work deployed directly onto physical robots.Solve perception problems where accuracy, latency, reliability, and real-world variability all matter.Join a growing organization where Staff-level engineers have meaningful technical influence and ownership.Compensation & BenefitsBase Salary: $180,000–$280,000 annually, depending on experience, technical depth, and level.Additional compensation includes equity and a comprehensive benefits package.Benefits include:Medical and health insurance options for employees and eligible family membersFlexible Paid Time OffPaid sick leave401(k) supportMeal benefitsAdditional employee benefits and perksThis is a full-time direct-hire opportunity. C2C candidates cannot be considered.