Perception Engineer

Moss; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Moss, based in San Francisco, is looking for a founding engineer to develop a 3D perception pipeline for autonomous farming robotics. The role involves building algorithms that interpret various sensor data and deploying real-time models on edge hardware.

The ideal candidate will have strong C++ skills and hands-on experience with 3D sensor data. This is a full-time position within a fast-moving team dedicated to tackling real-world agricultural challenges.

Qualifications

• Impressive real-world projects in robotics, perception, and mapping.
• Hands-on experience with LiDAR, radar, and depth cameras.
• Strong knowledge of C++ including templates and STL.

Responsibilities

• Own the full lifecycle of the 3D perception pipeline, from research to deployment.
• Build models that integrate LiDAR and camera data for analysis.
• Optimize models for performance on edge hardware.

Skills

Hands-on experience with 3D sensor data

Strong C++ skills

Experience training ML models

Object detection and segmentation

Robotics and perception projects

Job description

About Us

At moss, we build robots that scan trees! But at our core, we’re solving a much bigger problem: enabling autonomous farming.

We’re a small team of practical engineers with a long-term vision. We focus on real, messy, on-the-ground problems today, while working toward a future where autonomous farming helps make agriculture more sustainable and accessible.

If our mission aligns with how you like to work and think, we’d love to learn more about you.

The Role

Join us as a key founding engineer. We’re a small, fast-moving team of 5, developing novel perception systems and algorithms to interpret the physical world in challenging, real-world environments.

You will own the development and deployment of our 3D perception pipeline. This involves developing novel algorithms and multi-modal models (LiDAR, Camera, GPS & Environmental Data) for understanding farms and enabling autonomous robot operations.

We move quickly, solve hard problems, and are excited by the reactions we receive from our customers.

We're looking for both full time (in-person) roles and intern candidates for co-ops, summer, and/or part-time.

Minimum Requirements

• Impressive real-world projects beyond the classroom (robotics, perception, mapping, autonomy, etc.)
• Hands-on experience with 3D sensor data (LiDAR, radar, depth cameras)
• Strong C++ (templates, smart pointers, STL containers, algorithms)
• Experience training ML models on custom datasets (data curation, labeling, training/eval loops)
• Experience with object detection, semantic segmentation, and/or classical CV / point-cloud methods (e.g., clustering, registration, tracking)

What You'll Do

• Own the full lifecycle of our 3D perception pipeline (research, prototype, production, deployment, iteration)
• Build multimodal models and pipelines that fuse LiDAR, cameras, GPS and metadata for 3D detection and analysis
• Design robust algorithms for outdoor environments (harsh shadows, lighting shifts, motion blur, dust, severe occlusions)
• Help build and maintain ML infrastructure for automated labeling, dataset management, training, and evaluation
• Optimize and deploy models for real-time performance on edge hardware (latency, throughput, memory)
• Explore new approaches like vision-language-action (VLA) models, imitation learning, and autonomy-oriented perception for robot tasks