Principal Perception Hardware Engineer (Robotics)

Location: Seattle, United States; onsite work with field deployment at real job sites and proving grounds

Base salary range: $200,000–$250,000 per year

Company

hirify.global develops autonomy systems that combine software, hardware, and robotics to turn heavy equipment into intelligent machines for earthmoving.

What you will do

• Own end-to-end sensor system architecture, including sensing modality selection, sensor selection, placement, integration, and compute platform decisions.
• Run trade studies covering sensor coverage, occlusion, performance, cost, reliability, ruggedness, and retrofit constraints.
• Translate product, customer, business, and autonomy needs into sensor and subsystem requirements.
• Design validation, calibration, characterization, and acceptance-test processes for real machines in field conditions.
• Take sensor suites from prototypes through deployment on heavy equipment, including operation in dust, weather, and vibration.
• Set technical direction across hardware, perception, software, and vehicle teams while helping build the sensor systems capability.

Requirements

• Principal-level experience owning sensor systems for autonomous vehicles or robots and setting cross-team technical direction.
• Experience with sensor-suite architecture, requirements definition, sensor selection and placement, and coverage and occlusion analysis.
• Hands-on experience with cameras and LiDAR.
• Experience designing sensor validation, calibration, characterization, and test campaigns, including root-cause analysis across hardware and software.
• Track record of taking sensor suites from prototype to field deployment on real vehicles or robots.
• Experience selecting compute platforms in collaboration with embedded, software, and perception teams.

Nice to have

• Experience with radar or other optical sensing modalities.
• Expertise in sensor cleaning systems for degraded conditions.
• Experience leading data-collection campaigns with prototype vehicles in new operating domains.
• Supplier management experience for sensors and related components.
• Experience helping build and scale a sensor or hardware team.

Culture & Benefits

• Work on autonomy for off-road heavy equipment where sensing standards and operating approaches are still being established.
• Own outcomes through field deployment rather than handing off designs after development.
• Make pragmatic engineering decisions balancing cost, ruggedness, retrofit constraints, and delivery speed.
• Collaborate across hardware, perception, software, vehicle, supplier, and field teams.