Lead Perception Engineer

Woven; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 189,000 - 310,500; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Excellent health, wellness, dental, and vision coverage

Family planning and care benefits

Job summary

An innovative mobility company in Palo Alto is seeking a Lead Engineer to drive technical strategies and roadmap for advanced vehicle understanding systems. The ideal candidate will have over 10 years of experience in machine learning, with strong capabilities in algorithm design and fostering team collaboration. This role offers a salary range of $189,000 to $310,500 annually and extensive benefits, emphasizing a modern work environment for employees.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional experience with machine learning applications.
• Deep expertise in ML algorithms, supervised/unsupervised learning.
• Strong R&D potential in algorithm design and complex systems architecture.

Responsibilities

• Drive the technical vision and multi-year strategy for software.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure seamless integration.
• Develop state-of-the-art models to deliver desired driving environments.

Skills

Machine learning applications

Deep learning frameworks

C++

Python

Data-driven methods

Education

MS or PhD in Machine Learning, Engineering or related field

Job description

Woven by Toyota is enabling Toyota’s once-in-a-century transformation into a mobility company. Inspired by a legacy of innovating for the benefit of others, our mission is to challenge the current state of mobility through human‑centric innovation — expanding what “mobility” means and how it serves society.

Our work centers on four pillars: AD/ADAS, our autonomous driving and advanced driver assist technologies; Arene, our software development platform for software‑defined vehicles; Woven City, a test course for mobility; and Cloud & AI, the digital infrastructure powering our collaborative foundation. Business‑critical functions empower these teams to execute, and together, we’re working toward one bold goal: a world with zero accidents and enhanced well‑being for all.

TEAM

Woven by Toyota's AD/ADAS organization is developing the core algorithms for safe and robust driving of complex and uncertain real‑world environments. Our teams are contributing to next‑generation autonomy and ADAS active safety systems through core algorithms, data‑driven approaches, and efficient architectures. The Behavior Department within AD/ADAS is responsible for accelerating ML and AI technology to deliver state‑of‑the‑art and safe vehicle behaviors. Working across the spectrum of active safety and L2‑L4 autonomy, the team delivers core technology in the areas of perception, planning, control, and HMI towards production targets with Toyota.

WHO ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

We are seeking a Lead Engineer to serve as the right‑hand partner (to work in hand) to the head of World Understanding to drive the roadmap, architecture, metrics, and technical strategy for software components contributing to understanding around the vehicle. A system thinker with technical depth in machine learning approaches to complex systems. This engineer will accelerate the adoption of data‑driven and deep learning methodologies, focusing on ML system design and verification, supervised/unsupervised learning, multi‑modality, multi‑tasks training, and temporal/sequential modeling. This role emphasizes faster and more cost‑efficient model iteration, data‑driven validation strategies, and unlocking new safety/performance capabilities through advanced ML.

The role also requires strong communication skills, an aptitude for mentoring tech leads, influencing and collaborating with diverse stakeholders, including TMC, in identifying deep technical challenges, developing solutions, and executing on the delivery of our autonomy mission.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Driving the technical vision and multi‑year strategy for World Understanding (including perception, mapping, fusion, on‑board/off‑board) software.
• Leading project execution, defining efficient engineering processes, and mitigating risks.
• Collaborate with cross‑functional teams such as Data, Behavior (Planner/Controller/HMI), Developer Ecosystem, and Product Delivery while influencing technical decisions across the organization to drive innovation, ensure seamless system integration, and improve overall engineering efficiency.
• Develop state‑of‑the‑art models to deliver desired driving environments in various sensor configurations.
• Increase speed of the component‑ and system‑level model iteration while maintaining cost efficiency.
• Incorporate data‑driven approaches to improve system performance and unlock new capabilities for safety.
• Maintain the functional architecture design and lead review of technical designs.
• Drive organizational metrics towards performance, safety, and quality.
• Maintain external presence of the department through papers, patents, and presentations.
• Assess and mitigate risk to the technical program.
• Act in partnership with other Lead Engineers in AD/ADAS to solve high‑impact cross‑functional issues.
• Mentor and support engineers, fostering growth through code reviews, knowledge sharing, and collaboration with cross‑functional teams to align technical solutions with business goals.
• Design reusable software components as part of an integrated system.
• Understand and fulfill the software practices that produce maintainable code, including simulation, continuous integration, code review, HIL testing, and in‑vehicle testing.
• Build component and system level validation strategies that are leveraged to resolve complex interactions between components, increase performance, and evaluate design tradeoffs related to data‑driven practices.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

• 10+ years of professional experience with machine learning applications or applied science.
• MS or PHD in Machine Learning, Mechanical, Electrical, Computer, Aerospace Engineering, or similar.
• Deep expertise in ML algorithms, frameworks, data‑driven methods, supervised/unsupervised learning, multi‑modality, multi‑tasks training, and temporal/sequential modeling, and deployment of ML models at scale.
• Strong R&D potential in algorithm design, data‑driven approaches to safety, and large‑scale, complex systems architecture, and requirements‑driven development.
• Experience with utilizing deep learning frameworks to increase speed and ease of development.
• Experience with temporal data and/or sequential modeling.
• Experience with code quality and systems safety processes for production code delivery, with respect to data‑driven methodologies and model validation.
• Strong, practical understanding of real‑time system development, performance issues, testing modalities, and tradeoffs.
• Ability to write code in C++ and python.
• Ability to lead in globally distributed team.
• You are an excellent communicator, skilled collaborator, and principled colleague.

NICE TO HAVES

• Published research at top‑tier conferences (NeurIPS, CVPR and similar).
• Proven track record of deploying ML models at scale in self‑driving or related fields.
• Experience with computer vision (e.g. multi‑view geometry, camera calibration, depth estimation, neural radiance fields, gaussian splatting, simultaneous localization and mapping).
• Experience with Planner ML system design (e.g. including supervised/unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, diffusion policy).
• Experience with robot motion planning (e.g., trajectory optimization, sampling‑based planning, model predictive control).

For positions based in Palo Alto, CA, the base pay ranges from $189,000–$310,500 a year.

Your base salary is one part of your total compensation. We offer a base salary, short‑term and long‑term incentives, and a comprehensive benefits package. The total compensation offered to an employee will be dependent upon the individual's skills, experience, qualifications, location, and level.

WHAT WE OFFER

We are committed to creating a modern work environment that supports our employees and their loved ones. We offer many options of the best programs to allow you to do your most meaningful work and to help you shape the future of mobility.

• Excellent health, wellness, dental, and vision coverage.
• Family planning and care benefits.

OUR COMMITMENT

• We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity.
• Any information we receive from you will be used only in the hiring and onboarding process. Please see our privacy notice for more details.