Senior Perception Engineer

Job Details

Job Location: Main Location - PITTSBURGH, PA 15201

Join Our Team

At Onward Robotics, we are a bold, gritty, and purposeful team with an ambitious mission to revolutionize fulfillment. Our team is driven by a client-first mentality: we aim to solve hard problems and fuel our clients’ growth with innovation. We are seeking talented individuals who will have a huge impact on both our business and our team. Join us on our mission as we move fast, think big, and have fun!

About Us

Onward Robotics delivers innovative automation technology that coordinates humans and robots as a cohesive system to revolutionize fulfillment. Our Meet Me solution combines proprietary software with person-to-goods mobile robots to increase efficiency in warehousing, distribution, and e-commerce operations. Onward Robotics provides the boost in productivity, flexibility, and speed that companies need to remain competitive and grow. Learn more at onwardrobotics.com.

About The Role

As a Senior Perception Engineer in our Robot Software Department, you will work on algorithms and systems used for perception and mapping, free space estimation, object detection, and sensor calibration. As a core team member, you will be responsible for taking the lead on assigned sub-systems, algorithms, and tasks following them from requirements generation through testing and field deployment.

Responsibilities

• Design of algorithms robust to sensor and actuation uncertainty, not just the use of existing algorithms and packages. This should include implementation on real-world hardware and embedded systems.
• Testing, specifying, and integrating sensors while also developing system calibration and training purposes.
• Ability to be flexible and adaptable in a startup environment.
• Design and implementation of detection algorithms using multiple sensors.
• Working with data fusion and scene analysis pipelines.
• Adhere to software development best practices: peer reviews, testing, version control, bug tracking, and integrated documentation.
  
  

Core Competencies

• Ability to be flexible and adaptable in a startup environment.
• Good team player with great communication skills.
  
  

Typical Day

As a Senior Perception Engineer, You’ll Spend Your Day Blending Hands-on Experimentation With Deep Technical Development. Here’s What a Typical Day Might Look Like

• Kick off with a daily stand-up, aligning with your team on priorities, blockers, and progress.
• Dive into designing and coding perception algorithms, whether that’s refining free space estimation, tuning SLAM pipelines, or optimizing sensor fusion for real-time performance.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teammates (mechanical, electrical, and design engineers) to test algorithms on real robots, collecting sensor data and quickly iterating on solutions.
• Take ownership of your assigned feature or subsystem—gathering requirements, reviewing designs, and pushing updates through development, testing, and deployment.
• Review code from peers, contribute to technical discussions, and champion best practices to ensure high-quality, maintainable software.
• Troubleshoot issues uncovered during robot testing, from sensor calibration to GPU optimization, working hands-on with the hardware when needed.
• Mentor junior engineers, offering guidance on design choices, coding practices, and debugging approaches.
• Wrap up by documenting your work, updating the team, and planning next steps so your team stays aligned and projects keep momentum.
  
  

In this role, you’ll balance algorithm design, real-world testing, and collaboration—making every day a mix of intellectual challenge and hands-on robotics innovation.

Qualifications

Qualifications

• Required Skills
• Hands-on experience in robot perception and sensor fusion with proven track record of deploying algorithms in real-world applications.
• C/C programming experience.
• CUDA programming experience.
• Experience with software configuration management systems (git, SVM, etc.).
• Requirements-driven development.
• Minimum Experience Requirements
• 5 years of robot Perception experience.
• Understanding of sensor models and calibration methods.
• Experience with geometry-based Computer Vision approaches such as Structure from Motion, Stereo Vision, SLAM, Visual Odometry.
• Experience with point cloud-based detection algorithms such as free space detection and obstacle detection.
• Experience developing and debugging with a modern Linux platform.
• Preferred Experience Requirements
• 3 years of experience with GPU programming, such as CUDA or OpenCL.
• Prototyping real-time applications on embedded hardware.
• Experience working with autonomous robots.
• Experience with commercial software deployment and support.
• Algorithm lifecycle development from requirements through QA and field release.
  
  

Minimum Education Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical or Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
  
  

Preferred Education Requirements

• Master’s Degree or higher in Electrical or Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.