Field Development Engineer — Autonomous Perception Data Pipelines

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

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