Principal Perception Engineer, Obstacle Foundation Models - Autonomous Vehicles

NVIDIA AI; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 272,000 - 431,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Benefits

Job summary

NVIDIA is seeking a senior leader to own the vision, architecture, and roadmap for 3D obstacle perception in autonomous driving. You will design, implement, and productionize multi-sensor perception models using camera, radar, and lidar inputs, exploring BEV and transformer-based approaches.

The role emphasizes technical leadership, data strategy, latency and resource-awareness, and collaboration with safety, software, and hardware teams to deliver scalable perception solutions.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience in deep learning-based perception or related systems.
• Experience taking models from prototype to production.
• Strong proficiency in Python and/or C++.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for 3D obstacle perception for autonomous driving.
• Lead development of 3D perception models using multi-camera and multi-sensor fusion.
• Define KPI frameworks and drive data-driven improvements.

Skills

Deep learning

Perception systems

Python

C++

PyTorch

Leadership

Data strategy

Communication

Team mentoring

Hardware awareness

Education

BS/MS/PhD in CS/EE or related

Tools

CUDA

PyTorch

Transformers

Job description

Job Requisition ID JR2020551

Job Category Engineering

Time Type Full time

Intelligent machines powered by artificial intelligence - computers that can learn, reason, and interact with people - are transforming every industry. GPU-accelerated deep learning provides the foundation for machines to perceive, reason, and solve complex problems. NVIDIA GPUs run deep learning algorithms that simulate aspects of human intelligence, acting as the brain of computers, robots, and self-driving cars that can perceive and understand the world.

What You'll Be Doing

• Own the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for 3D obstacle perception to support end-to-end autonomous driving functionalities, leveraging state-of-the-art CNN and transformer-based architectures where appropriate.
• Design and develop advanced 3D perception models using multi-camera inputs and/or multi-sensor fusion (camera, radar, lidar) for obstacle detection and tracking, including opportunities to explore BEV and transformer-based 3D perception.
• Lead the development of efficient, production-grade deep learning models: define objectives, select architectures, guide experimentation, and establish best practices for training and evaluation, using techniques such as large-scale pretraining, distillation, and parameter-efficient fine-tuning (e.g., LoRA).
• Define and drive KPI frameworks to quantify perception performance; analyze large-scale real and synthetic datasets to identify failure modes and systematically improve accuracy, robustness, and efficiency, incorporating modern approaches like self-supervised and representation learning when beneficial.
• Lead data strategy for perception: specify data and labeling requirements, prioritize data collection and annotation, and collaborate closely with data and ground-truth teams to maximize impact, including model-assisted workflows (e.g., active learning, auto-labeling, VLMs) and advanced model-in-the-loop tooling.
• Partner with safety, systems, and software teams to ensure perception solutions meet stringent product requirements for safety, latency, resource usage, and software robustness, and are ready for deployment at scale.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to other engineers, influencing design and implementation across the broader perception and autonomy teams.

What We Need To See

• 15+ years of hands-on experience developing deep learning-based perception or closely related systems for complex real-world problems, with strong proficiency in frameworks such as PyTorch and a track record of taking models from prototype to production.
• Demonstrated technical leadership as a senior or principal-level individual contributor: owning features or subsystems end-to-end, setting technical direction, making architectural decisions, and coordinating across teams.
• Proven experience in data-driven development, including close collaboration with data, labeling, and ground-truth teams on data strategy, labeling quality, and iterative model improvement.
• Strong programming skills in Python and/or C++, with a history of building reliable, high-performance, production-quality software.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence, align, and drive consensus across multidisciplinary teams.
• BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related fields (or equivalent experience).

Ways To Stand Out From The Crowd

• Proven track record leading the design and deployment of perception solutions for autonomous driving or robotics using camera-based deep learning at scale.
• Hands-on experience architecting and deploying DNN-based perception pipelines on embedded or real-time platforms, including optimization for latency, memory, and compute constraints, and experience with modern architectures such as CNNs and transformers, plus familiarity with techniques like large-scale pretraining, parameter-efficient fine-tuning (e.g., LoRA), or vision-language models (VLMs).
• Strong publication record or recognized contributions in deep learning, computer vision, or autonomous systems at leading conferences/journals (e.g., CVPR, ICCV, NeurIPS, IROS).
• Deep understanding of 3D computer vision fundamentals, including camera modeling and calibration (intrinsic and extrinsic), multi-view geometry, and 3D representations, ideally with experience applying these concepts in transformer-based 3D or BEV perception pipelines.
• Experience with CUDA development and optimizing training or inference pipelines through custom CUDA kernels or other GPU-accelerated components.

Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and the pay of employees in similar positions.

The base salary range is 272,000 USD - 431,250 USD.

You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.

Applications for this job will be accepted at least until September 2, 2026.

This posting is for an existing vacancy.

NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.

NVIDIA is committed to fostering an inclusive work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.