Senior Perception Engineer

Kodiak Robotics, Inc. was founded in 2018 and has become a leader in autonomous ground transportation committed to a safer and more efficient future for all. The company has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) powered technology stack purpose-built for commercial trucking and the public sector. The company delivers freight daily for its customers across the southern United States using its autonomous technology.

In 2024, Kodiak became the first known company to publicly announce delivering a driverless semi-truck to a customer. Kodiak is also leveraging its commercial self-driving software to develop, test and deploy autonomous capabilities for the U.S. Department of Defense.

We are seeking a highly skilled Perception Engineer to join our Autonomy Software Engineering team. In this role, you will use your expertise in state estimation & multi object tracking to shape the perception stack as we scale, incorporating and developing state of the art algorithms and techniques. You’ll leverage advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) models and techniques to deploy and scale safe autonomous perception systems.

If you're passionate about how robots perceive and understand the world at scale, this role is for you.

• Lead efforts to advance learned scene estimation solutions in the Kodiak Driver.
• Use principled approaches for fusing information from multiple modalities (camera, radar, lidar, thermal, and IMU) to improve perception performance.
• Improve multi-target tracking performance including track initiation, measurement to track association, and track state maintenance.
• Develop novel algorithms to incorporate noisy measurements to construct a solid foundational understanding of the world.
• Develop tooling, metrics, and visualization to advance sensor fusion performance.
• Embody innovation and collaboration. Think creatively and resourcefully to solve problems.

• Strong technical background. BS or MS with at least 5 years industry experience, or PhD with at least 3 years of academic or industry experience, in building state estimation and sensor fusion systems.
• Domain Expertise. Topics of interest include sensor fusion, state estimation, Kalman filtering, particle filtering, multi-object tracking, deep learning, learned scene estimation, behavior prediction.
• Skilled in C++ with strong problem-solving skills.
• Strong software engineering skills and experience building high-reliability deployed applications . You write well-designed, highly maintainable code.
• Solid understanding of metrics, data analysis, and scientific evaluation.
• A team player. You take ownership and work with the team to deliver exceptional results. You are interested in the performance of the entire system across engineering disciplines.
• Ability to build and iterate quickly. You enjoy working fast and smart, and you are comfortable in defining and building lasting infrastructure components from scratch.
• Hands on. Curious. Flexible. Interested in new domains to expand your horizons and provide a complete system wide solution.
• Great communicator. You have experience writing clear, concise design documentation to gather feedback from across the team to find the best solution.

• Competitive compensation package including equity and biannual bonuses
• Excellent Medical, Dental, and Vision plans through Kaiser Permanente, Anthem, and Guardian (including a medical plan with infertility benefits)
• Flexible PTO and generous parental leave policies
• Our office is centrally located in Mountain View, CA
• Office perks: dog-friendly, free catered lunch, a fully stocked kitchen, and free EV charging
• Fidelity 401(k)
• Commuter, FSA, Dependent Care FSA, HSA

The pay range listed below reflects the base salary in our SF/Silicon Valley location, across several internal levels. Actual starting pay will be based on job-related factors including: work location, experience, relevant training, education, skill level and performance during interview. Total compensation at Kodiak includes base pay, equity, bonus and a competitive benefits package

$180,000 - $220,000 USD

At Kodiak, we strive to build a diverse community working towards our common company goals in a safe and collaborative environment where harassment of any kind is strictly prohibited. Kodiak is committed to equal opportunity employment regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or veteran status, or any other basis protected by applicable law.