Member of Technical Staff, Research Engineer

XDOF; San Mateo (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

XDOF is hiring a Research Engineer to bridge research prototypes and production-scale software for embedded robotics. You will convert experimental perception pipelines into reliable, real-time code running on hardware, while profiling and optimizing for CPU, memory and GPU efficiency.

The role spans working across perception, ML and data infrastructure, shipping production-grade systems and collaborating with researchers on tradeoffs between accuracy and latency.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of industry software engineering focused on systems, performance or production ML.
• Strong C++ proficiency with modern standards and memory management.
• CUDA programming: write, profile and debug GPU kernels.
• CPU performance optimization: profiling, cache behavior and SIMD.
• Python with ML frameworks to read/modify research code.
• Linux systems, build tools, debugging and containerization.

Responsibilities

• Transform research prototype code into production-grade, scalable software.
• Hardening perception pipelines for real-time embedded platforms.
• Profile and optimize performance at CPU, memory and GPU levels.
• Develop and debug CUDA kernels for acceleration.
• Integrate outputs into production codebase with testing and observability.
• Containerize workloads with Docker for scalable deployment.
• Collaborate with researchers to balance accuracy, latency and resources.

Skills

C++ (modern)

CUDA

Python

Linux

Performance optimization

Containerization

ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow)

Tools

NSight

Docker

Job description

Research Engineer

At XDOF, we’re at an inflection point. Frontier labs are racing to build general-purpose robots, and high-quality training data is the bottleneck. We’re building the foundation behind the foundation models – the data collection systems, operational capability, exabyte-scale data warehouse, and software toolchain – to help our partners drive the field forward.

Our research teams move fast and produce breakthrough work, but research code and production code are different things. We’re looking for a Research Engineer to bridge that gap: someone who can read a research prototype, understand it deeply, and turn it into something that runs reliably at scale on real hardware. You can expect to float across teams to wherever the highest-priority needs are, across perception, ML, and data infrastructure.

What You’ll Do

Research engineers take prototype code and make it production-grade. Sample projects include:

• taking a research perception pipeline (pose estimation, SLAM, calibration) and hardening it for reliable, real-time execution on embedded platforms


• profiling and optimizing performance-critical code at the CPU, memory, and GPU level using tools like perf, NSight, and custom microbenchmarks


• writing and debugging CUDA kernels for low-level acceleration of compute-heavy workloads


• integrating research outputs into the production codebase with proper testing, error handling, and observability


• containerizing and packaging workloads (Docker) so they can be scaled and deployed by the infrastructure team


• understanding and leveraging the infrastructure team’s orchestration and compute systems to hand off production-ready workloads cleanly


• working with researchers to understand algorithmic intent and make informed tradeoffs between accuracy, latency, and resource usage

About You

Baseline skills:

• 3+ years of industry experience in software engineering with a focus on systems, performance, or production ML


• strong C++ proficiency, including modern C++ (C++17/20), memory management, and performance-conscious coding patterns


• CUDA programming experience: ability to write, profile, and debug GPU kernels


• experience with CPU performance optimization: profiling, cache behavior, SIMD, latency reduction


• proficiency with Python and familiarity with ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow) at the level needed to read and modify research code


• comfort with Linux systems, including build systems, debugging tools, and containerization

You might be a good fit if you:

• have taken research or prototype code and shipped it in a production system


• have worked on real-time or embedded systems where latency and resource constraints matter


• have experience with perception, computer vision, or robotics systems


• have optimized model inference for deployment (TensorRT, ONNX Runtime, or similar)


• understand the full lifecycle from research notebook to containerized, monitored production service


• are very comfortable working in 0-1 environments


• are mission-driven and passionate about robotics: work at XDOF is fast-paced and constant. We hope you love what you’re going to be doing, because you’ll be doing a lot of it!