Field Development Engineer

Avala; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Dental coverage

Vision coverage

FSA

Unlimited PTO

Equity

Job summary

Avala is seeking a technically hands-on engineer to embed with our largest enterprise customers in San Francisco, integrating our data platform into perception pipelines for autonomous vehicle and robotics customers. You’ll be a trusted partner, translating sensor data needs into platform features and ensuring production-grade training data at scale.

Join a team that collaborates with ML researchers and engineering managers, traveling 20–30% to customer sites if needed, and helping shape the

Qualifications

• 4+ years in software engineering with customer-facing technical roles.
• Strong Python and systems programming experience.
• Understanding of autonomous vehicle or robotics perception stacks.
• Experience with sensor data — LiDAR, camera, radar, IMU.
• Excellent communication skills — you can work with ML researchers and engineering managers alike.
• Willingness to travel to customer sites (20-30%).

Responsibilities

• Embed directly with Avala's enterprise customers to integrate our platform into their data pipelines.
• Work on-site or closely with enterprise AV and robotics engineering teams.
• Integrate Avala's annotation and data platform into customer perception pipelines.
• Build custom data connectors, export formats, and workflow automations.
• Troubleshoot production data quality issues across sensor modalities.
• Represent Avala as a technical expert in customer engineering meetings.

Skills

Python

Systems programming

Communication skills

Travel readiness

Tools

ROS

MCAP

Job description

Posted 6 months ago San Francisco, CA full-time

About This Role

Embed directly with Avala's largest enterprise customers — autonomous vehicle programs and robotics companies — to integrate our platform into their data pipelines. You'll be a trusted technical partner who understands their perception stack and ensures Avala delivers production-grade training data at scale.

What You'll Do:

• Work on-site or closely with enterprise AV and robotics engineering teams
• Integrate Avala's annotation and data platform into customer perception pipelines
• Build custom data connectors, export formats, and workflow automations
• Troubleshoot production data quality issues across sensor modalities
• Translate customer requirements into platform feature requests and product feedback
• Represent Avala as a technical expert in customer engineering meetings

Requirements:

• 4+ years in software engineering with customer-facing technical roles
• Strong Python and systems programming experience
• Understanding of autonomous vehicle or robotics perception stacks
• Experience with sensor data — LiDAR, camera, radar, IMU
• Excellent communication skills — you can work with ML researchers and engineering managers alike
• Willingness to travel to customer sites (20-30%)

Nice to Have:

• Experience at an AV company (Tesla, Waymo, Aurora, Motional, Zoox)
• Familiarity with annotation tools or ML training data pipelines
• Experience with ROS, MCAP, or custom sensor data formats

Python Customer Success LiDAR Sensor Fusion Robotics

What We Offer

Competitive salary and meaningful equity in the team building Fleet Learning Infrastructure for Physical AI

Full health, dental, and vision coverage, plus FSA and unlimited PTO

Work on the closed-loop data infrastructure that the next generation of autonomous systems learns from

A team that built Tesla Autopilot's data infrastructure, now building something bigger