Perception Engineer — 3D Representation & Navigation (Robotics)

Location: Irvine, California, United States; on-site

Company

hirify.global develops risk-aware, reliable embodied AI systems for real robots, sensors, and field deployments.

What you will do

• Design and build real-time 3D scene and traversability representations for robot navigation, including point-cloud-based and learned implicit structures.
• Develop and maintain perception, localization, and mapping systems for autonomous robots in unstructured, off-road, and field environments.
• Implement multi-sensor perception using LiDAR, cameras, RADAR, GPS, and inertial sensors, and integrate new sensing modalities.
• Move perception algorithms from research prototypes into production on physical robots; debug issues found during testing and field operations.
• Build metrics, regression tests, validation tools, and scalable solutions for multiple robots, environments, and missions.
• Collaborate with autonomy, controls, platform, research, engineering, and field operations teams.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, or a related technical field.
• 3+ years of experience in verification, validation, systems testing, or perception evaluation for robotics, autonomous systems, automotive, or similar domains.
• Experience with robotic sensors including LiDAR, cameras, GPS, and IMUs.
• Understanding of perception system behavior, sensor limitations, and common failure modes.
• Experience creating test plans, validation procedures, performance metrics, structured reports, and conducting root-cause analysis from logs, datasets, and field results.
• Strong cross-functional communication skills and the ability to work with development teams while representing an independent verification and validation function.

Nice to have

• Experience validating perception systems for autonomous vehicles, mobile robots, drones, industrial robots, or defense robotics platforms.
• Familiarity with detection, tracking, localization, mapping, and sensor-fusion workflows.
• Experience with simulation, software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, replay-based validation, sensor calibration, synchronization, and sensor health monitoring.
• Experience building automated regression tools or validation infrastructure.
• Knowledge of annotated datasets, ground-truth generation, scenario-based testing, requirements traceability, and safety-oriented development practices.

Culture & Benefits

• Work directly with real robots, sensors, and field deployments.
• Systems are tested on hardware and improved through real-world operation.
• Close collaboration across autonomy, controls, platform, research, engineering, and field operations.
• On-site work in Irvine, within Southern California’s robotics ecosystem.