Robotics Lead: Autonomy & Systems Architect (Equity)

ATOMS Careers page; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 255,000 - 322,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, Vision, Disability, &

401(k)

Equity

Sick Time, Unlimited Flexible Time Off

Paid holidays

Team lunch in SoMa office

Job summary

Atoms is hiring a Robotics Lead in San Francisco to provide technical leadership across perception, planning, controls, and vehicle systems. You will define architecture, drive the robotics stack, and mentor teams while delivering production-ready autonomy capabilities.

You will collaborate with AI, hardware, firmware, simulation, and vehicle engineering groups to scale robotics from prototype to deployment, solving hard, real-world problems with measurable impact.

Qualifications

• Significant experience developing robotics, autonomous vehicles, or other complex autonomous systems.
• Strong programming skills in C++ and/or Python.
• Experience leading architecture-level decisions and major technical initiatives.
• Experience taking robotics or autonomy capabilities from development through real-world deployment.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the technical direction of the robotics and autonomy stack.
• Lead architecture and integration across perception, localization, prediction, planning, controls, and vehicle systems.
• Develop and improve algorithms for motion planning, trajectory generation, decision-making, and vehicle control.
• Own complex system-level problems that span multiple components of the autonomy stack.
• Diagnose real-world autonomy failures and drive improvements across algorithms, sensors, and vehicle systems.
• Establish evaluation and validation methodologies that connect component-level performance to vehicle behavior.
• Partner with AI Research and Perception teams to integrate learned models into the broader autonomy system.
• Work closely with software, hardware, firmware, simulation, and vehicle engineering teams to bring autonomous capabilities into production.
• Provide technical mentorship and raise the engineering bar across the robotics organization.

Skills

Robotics leadership

Motion planning

Localization

Controls

Robotics architecture

C++/Python

Real-time systems

Team mentorship

Tools

ROS

Job description

Atoms is hiring a Robotics Lead in San Francisco to provide technical leadership across perception, planning, controls, and vehicle systems. You will define architecture, drive the robotics stack, and mentor teams while delivering production-ready autonomy capabilities.

You will collaborate with AI, hardware, firmware, simulation, and vehicle engineering groups to scale robotics from prototype to deployment, solving hard, real-world problems with measurable impact.