Director of Perception

Fruition Group US; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 220,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Fruition Group US is assisting a well-funded autonomous vehicle company in recruiting a Director of Perception. You will own the technical strategy for perception, including sensor fusion, 3D detection, and scene understanding, while building and leading a team that can operate at scale.

You'll stay hands-on with architecture and model decisions, partnering with planning, controls, simulation, and infrastructure teams to ensure perception outputs drive real-world decisions.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in perception, CV, or sensor fusion for autonomous systems.
• Experience shipping perception systems onto real vehicles.
• Strong leadership with proven team-building ability.
• Fluency in 3D object detection, multi-sensor fusion, tracking, or scene understanding.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical strategy and roadmap for perception, including sensor fusion, 3D detection, tracking, and scene understanding.
• Build and grow a team of perception engineers and researchers, setting standards and hiring bar.
• Stay hands-on with architecture and model decisions while leading delivery.
• Collaborate with planning, controls, simulation, and infrastructure teams to align perception outputs with downstream decisions.
• Drive rigorous evaluation of perception performance on real-world edge cases.
• Represent the perception function to executives and partners as the platform matures.

Skills

Perception systems

Computer vision

Sensor fusion

Team leadership

3D object detection

Multi-sensor fusion

Tracking

Occupancy/scene representation

Publications experience

Tools

Publications

Job description

$220,000 - $300,000 base + equity + bonus

About the Role:

Fruition Group is exclusively partnering with a well-funded, fast-scaling autonomous vehicle company to find their next Director of Perception.

Our client is building the perception systems that let self-driving vehicles understand and react to the real world in real time - and they need a hands-on technical leader to own that stack as the company scales from strong early results toward much broader deployment.

This is not a purely managerial role. You'll be expected to stay close to the technical details - reviewing architecture, digging into model performance, and making hard calls on trade-offs - while also building and leading the team responsible for delivering it.

What You'll Do:

• Own the technical strategy and roadmap for perception, spanning sensor fusion, 3D detection, tracking, and scene understanding.
• Build, lead, and grow a team of perception engineers and researchers, setting technical standards and hiring bar as the group scales.
• Stay hands-on with architecture and model decisions - this is a leadership role that still gets into the weeds, not just the roadmap.
• Partner closely with planning, controls, simulation, and infrastructure teams to make sure perception output actually serves downstream decision-making.
• Drive rigorous evaluation of perception performance against real-world edge cases, not just benchmark metrics.
• Represent the perception function to executive leadership and key partners as the platform matures.

What Our Client Is Looking For:

• 10+ years in perception, computer vision, or sensor fusion for autonomous systems, including several years in a technical leadership role.
• Proven experience shipping perception systems onto real vehicles operating in the real world - not just research or simulation.
• Deep technical fluency in areas like 3D object detection, multi-sensor fusion (camera, lidar, radar), tracking, and/or occupancy/scene representation.
• Strong publication record and/or demonstrated research impact is a plus, but production experience is the priority.
• A track record of building and scaling high-performing engineering or research teams.
• Comfort operating in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment where the playbook is still being written.