Perception Engineer (Robotics)

Location: Bristol, Rhode Island, United States; on-site work and physical vehicle testing required

Company

Startup designing and manufacturing autonomous underwater vehicles for underwater security, exploration, research, and operations.

What you will do

• Implement and maintain real-time perception pipelines on autonomous vehicle platforms.
• Develop algorithms for obstacle detection, classification, and multi-object tracking.
• Write and maintain ROS 2 nodes and packages for on-vehicle perception software.
• Use Python and C++ to prototype and implement production-grade perception and machine learning algorithms.
• Test vehicles on site and debug perception failures in real-world operating conditions.
• Collaborate with localization, prediction, and planning teams to define reliable perception interfaces.

Requirements

• 3–5 years of experience in robotics perception, computer vision, or autonomous systems.
• Strong Python skills and solid ROS/ROS 2 experience with commercial-grade robotic systems.
• Proficiency in C++ for real-time, production-grade robotics software.
• Experience with 3D sensor data, including LiDAR point clouds, depth estimation, or multi-sensor fusion.
• Working knowledge of PyTorch or other deep learning frameworks for detection or segmentation, plus classical data-driven perception techniques.
• US citizenship, ability to gain a security clearance, and willingness to work on site and participate in physical vehicle testing are required.

Nice to have

• Marine sensor experience and familiarity with autonomous-vehicle perception challenges such as moving-object tracking, occlusion handling, sensor degradation, and GPS-denied localization.
• Rust experience and knowledge of TensorRT or other inference optimization tools.
• Understanding of autonomous-vehicle safety standards and safety-critical software practices.
• Startup or defense-industry experience.
• Experience deploying perception models on embedded automotive hardware such as Drive AGX or Jetson.

Culture & Benefits

• Hands-on work on autonomous underwater vehicles and next-generation underwater autonomy.
• Close collaboration with autonomy, localization, prediction, and planning specialists.
• Practical engineering work combining software development, vehicle integration, and real-world testing.
• Equal opportunity workplace welcoming candidates from all backgrounds.