Senior Autonomy Engineer
Brain Corp2 months ago
Base Salary
$180k - $224k/yr
Responsibilities
- Design, train, deploy, and improve machine learning systems for perception, SLAM, prediction, and motion planning.
- Develop transformer-based perception, vision-language models, diffusion or imitation-learning policies, and neural or Gaussian-splatting mapping approaches.
- Translate research papers, open-source releases, and conference talks into production-quality robot implementations.
- Build data engines and evaluation infrastructure that convert fleet logs into training data, regression tests, and shipped improvements.
- Own autonomy features from prototyping through simulation, on-robot validation, fleet rollout, and real-world impact measurement.
- Improve perception, mapping, and planning runtime performance on embedded GPU and accelerator hardware through quantization, distillation, and kernel work.
- Contribute to internal frameworks, simulation tools, and developer experience.
- Provide technical guidance and mentorship to engineers across robotics, ML, and supporting software systems.
Requirements
- A master's degree or Ph.D. in computer science, robotics, electrical engineering, or a related field, or equivalent demonstrated experience.
- At least 5 years of relevant industry or research experience building autonomy, perception, or machine learning systems.
- Strong fluency in Python and C++ in a Linux environment.
- A demonstrated record of translating research ideas and papers into deployed implementations.
- Depth in one or more of machine learning, SLAM and state estimation, motion planning, or 3D perception.
- Hands-on experience with PyTorch and/or JAX, modern training pipelines, transformers, diffusion models, and vision-language-action models.
- Experience designing robotic systems with ROS 2 or comparable middleware and simulation tools such as Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, or Gazebo.
- Experience with data curation, labeling strategy, large-scale training, offline and online evaluation, and continuous deployment to production hardware.
- Solid systems and software architecture judgment and the ability to balance learned and classical approaches.
- Experience with code review, observability, and iterative engineering delivery.
- Preferred qualifications include open-source robotics or ML contributions, publications at CoRL, RSS, ICRA, NeurIPS, CVPR, or ICML, and experience with TensorRT, ONNX, or custom CUDA kernels.
Benefits
- Discretionary annual target bonus, stock options, and a 401(k) plan with match, no waiting period, and immediate vesting.
- Medical, dental, vision, life, disability, HSA, Flexible Spending Accounts, Employee Assistance Program, legal/identity support, and pet insurance benefits.
- Flexible vacation, paid sick leave, volunteer time off, 10 paid company holidays, and a winter company shutdown.
- Daily on-site lunch, an on-campus gym with pool and tennis courts, and employee community and wellness events at the San Diego office.
- Internal continuous learning events and opportunities to share personal interests and hobbies.
- The role is based in San Diego, California, with an office-based work environment.
About Brain Corp
Brain Corp develops BrainOS, an autonomy software platform that powers autonomous mobile robots used in commercial public spaces, especially retail, for floor cleaning and inventory management. The company licenses its software to OEM partners and enterprises, with services that support deployment and fleet operations; more than 30,000 AMRs run on BrainOS. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in San Diego, it is privately held and backed by investors including SoftBank Vision Fund and Qualcomm Ventures.