Lead ML/Perception Engineer

May Mobility, Inc.; United States; Remote; USD 235,000 - 275,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare

Retirement match

Parental leave

Flexible vacation

Job summary

May Mobility is building autonomous shuttle and mobility services nationwide. As Perception Lead you will direct how our vehicles perceive the world, focusing on scene detection, sensor robustness, and scalable architecture. You will mentor engineers and deliver production-grade perception capabilities.

You will work with a team of robotics experts to push the boundaries of real-world autonomous systems, ensuring safety and reliability across varied environments.

Qualifications

• A minimum of 5+ years of industry experience on real-world robot systems maintaining high-quality industrial-grade code.
• Master’s degree in Robotics, Computer Science, or Computer Engineering, or a field that requires a strong mathematical and/or engineering foundation.
• Demonstrated experience leading or making major architectural decisions for a perception, robotics, or autonomy software stack.
• Strong programming skills in C/C++/Python; software development in Linux environments.
• Strong experience in ML/DL development with PyTorch/TensorFlow.
• Direct experience developing or fine-tuning large-scale multi-modal models for real-world perception applications.
• Experience working on real-time areas: semantic scene understanding, detection, multi-target tracking, sensor fusion.
• Extensive experience deploying ML/DL models in real-time systems with high accuracy and low latency.
• Experience with all-weather perception, sensor degradation modeling, fault detection, graceful-degradation strategies for safety-critical systems.
• Experience with scene classification, ODD monitoring, and runtime capability activation in autonomous systems.
• Experience migrating large legacy perception systems to scalable frameworks.
• Experience utilizing large-scale multi-modal models for edge-case detection and explainable AI.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical direction of how our vehicles see and interpret the world.
• Advance scene detection so the system recognizes context and engages the right behavior.
• Hardening perception against sensor degradation and adverse weather for safe performance.
• Drive architectural updates to evolve perception stack into scalable production-grade foundation.
• Set the technical bar, mentor engineers, and deliver capabilities for real-world operation.

Skills

C/C++/Python

Linux

ML/DL development

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Real-time systems

Sensor fusion

Robotics perception

Open-vocabulary detection

Edge-case AI

Explainable AI

RL for ML

Education

Master’s degree in Robotics, Computer Science, or Computer Engineering

Tools

ROS

CUDA

Job description

May Mobility is transforming cities through autonomous technology to create a safer, greener, more accessible world. Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, May develops and deploys autonomous vehicles (AVs) powered by our innovative Multi-Policy Decision Making (MPDM) technology that literally reimagines the way AVs think. Our vehicles do more than just drive themselves - they provide value to communities, bridge public transit gaps and move people where they need to go safely, easily and with a lot more fun. We’re building the world’s best autonomy system to reimagine transit by minimizing congestion, expanding access and encouraging better land use in order to foster more green, vibrant and livable spaces. Since our founding in 2017, we’ve given more than 500,000 autonomous rides to real people around the globe. And we’re just getting started. We’re hiring people who share our passion for building the future, today, solving real-world problems and seeing the impact of their work. Join us.

Job Summary

May Mobility is entering an exciting phase of growth as we expand our first-of-its-kind autonomous shuttle and mobility services across the nation. Launched in 2017 with a strong team of experienced roboticists and software engineers with decades of experience fielding robotic systems in the wild, May Mobility is looking to expand its team of robotics engineers with a background in robotics or autonomous vehicles.

As Perception Lead, you will own the technical direction of how our vehicles see and interpret the world. This is a hands on role focused on three priorities: advancing scene detection so the system reliably recognizes its operating context and engages the right behavior; hardening perception against sensor degradation and adverse weather (rain, snow, fog, glare, low light, and sensor soiling or occlusion) so performance degrades gracefully and safely; and driving major architectural updates to evolve our perception stack into a scalable, maintainable, production-grade foundation. You will set the technical bar, mentor engineers, and deliver capabilities that operate safely in the real world.

Skills and Abilities

Success in this role typically requires the following competencies:

• Proven ability to architect and evolve large-scale perception or autonomy systems, balancing performance, latency, safety, and long-term maintainability.
• Strong grasp of perception robustness and reliability engineering, including degraded-sensor operation, adverse-weather handling, fault detection, and graceful degradation.
• Experience with scene/scenario understanding and runtime activation logic (e.g., context classification, ODD monitoring, behavior triggering).
• Familiar with ML development cycle, deployment, and optimization.
• Deep understanding of data: data pipeline, data balancing, data mining, and data-driven performance improvement.
• Knowledge of multimodal learning techniques, including contrastive learning and prompt engineering for zero-shot visual recognition.
• Deep understanding of testing frameworks and workflows.
• Excellent attention to detail and rigorous testing methodology.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills and team-leading abilities.

Qualifications and Experience

Candidates most successful in this role typically hold the following qualifications or comparable knowledge or experience:

Required

• A minimum of 5+ years of industry experience working on real-world robot systems maintaining high-quality industrial-grade code.
• Master’s degree in Robotics, Computer Science, or Computer Engineering, or a field that requires a strong mathematical and/or engineering foundation.
• Demonstrated experience leading or making major architectural decisions for a perception, robotics, or autonomy software stack.
• Strong programming skills in C/C++/Python; software development in Linux environments.
• Strong experience in ML/DL development with PyTorch/TensorFlow.
• Direct experience developing or fine-tuning large-scale multi-modal models (e.g., multi-sensor fusion models, foundation models, including VLM backbones) for real-world perception applications.
• Experience working on a combination of several of the following real-time areas:
• Semantic scene understanding, scene/scenario detection, and open-vocabulary detection.
• Perception robustness in degraded or adverse-weather conditions.
• Multi-target tracking and sensor fusion.
• Extensive experience deploying features/ML/DL models in real-time systems with high accuracy and low latency.
• Experience developing all-weather / adverse-condition perception, sensor degradation modeling, fault detection, and graceful-degradation strategies for safety-critical systems.
• Experience with scene/scenario classification, ODD monitoring, and runtime capability activation in autonomous systems.
• Experience re-architecting or migrating large, legacy perception systems to modern, scalable frameworks.
• Experience utilizing large-scale multi-modal models for edge-case (long-tail) detection and explainable AI in autonomous systems.
• Familiar with synthetic data in ML system development.
• Familiar with Reinforcement Learning (RL) for ML systems.
• Familiar with ML/DL optimization on real-time products with limited compute resources (e.g., quantization of large transformer models).
• Strong background demonstrated through high-quality capability deliveries to robots working in the field.

Physical Requirements

• Standard office working conditions which includes but is not limited to:
• Prolonged sitting
• Prolonged standing
• Prolonged computer use

Benefits and Perks

• Comprehensive healthcare suite including medical, dental, vision, life, and disability plans. Domestic partners who have been residing together at least one year are also eligible to participate.
• Health Savings and Flexible Spending Healthcare and Dependent Care Accounts available.
• Rich retirement benefits, including an immediately vested employer safe harbor match.
• Generous paid parental leave as well as a phased return to work.
• Flexible vacation policy in addition to paid company holidays.
• Total Wellness Program providing numerous resources for overall wellbeing

Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and/or people of color are less likely to apply to a job unless they meet every qualification. At May Mobility, we’re committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workforce, so if you’re excited about this role but your previous experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification, we encourage you to apply anyway! You may be the perfect candidate for this or another role at May.

May Mobility is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants for employment will be considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, genetics or any other legally protected basis. Below, you have the opportunity to share your preferred gender pronouns, gender, ethnicity, and veteran status with May Mobility to help us identify areas of improvement in our hiring and recruitment processes. Completion of these questions is entirely voluntary. Any information you choose to provide will be kept confidential, and will not impact the hiring decision in any way. If you believe that you will need any type of accommodation, please let us know.

Note to Recruitment Agencies: May Mobility does not accept unsolicited agency resumes. Furthermore, May Mobility does not pay placement fees for candidates submitted by any agency other than its approved partners.

Salary Range

$235,000 - $275,000 USD

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiringprocess or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in aconfidential file.

As set forth in May Mobility’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.