Robotics Perception Engineer - Real-Time Autonomy

TerraFirma; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity in TerraFirma

Relocation package

Job summary

TerraFirma is seeking a skilled robotics software engineer to design perception systems for autonomous heavy machinery. You will integrate sensors, build real-time processing pipelines for images, point clouds, and multi-sensor data, and collaborate across teams to drive reliable perception and control.

You’ll work on embedded robotics software in Linux environments, implement real-time algorithms in C++/Python, train ML models, and help production deployments.

Qualifications

• S. in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a closely related field.
• ~2+ years of professional or project experience with robotic software development, involving implementation of real‑time algorithms for perception and data processing pipelines.
• ~ Experience working with embedded applications for robotics, autonomous vehicles, aerospace, automotive, or construction.
• Proficiency in C++ and Python, including development for Linux‑based systems and bare‑metal MCUs.
• Experience training, testing, optimizing, and deploying online and offline machine learning models with existing and custom datasets.
• Experience implementing algorithms or pipelines for robotic systems or feedback control from scratch in C++ or Python.
• Experience performing object detection on multiple data sources including multi‑spectral images and point clouds.
• Experience programming FPGAs for high‑throughput networking, compression, or DSP.

Responsibilities

• Design perception systems for autonomous heavy machinery and integrate sensors.
• Build real-time data processing pipelines for images, point clouds, and multi-sensor streams.
• Collaborate across perception, motion/trajectory planning, and control teams to enable safe operations.
• Develop and test ML models and supporting data collection/ labeling workflows.
• Create simulation and visualization tools to speed up robotic software prototyping.
• Own sensor integration, calibration, and testing from prototype to production.

Education

S. in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a closely related field

Job description

TerraFirma is seeking a skilled robotics software engineer to design perception systems for autonomous heavy machinery. You will integrate sensors, build real-time processing pipelines for images, point clouds, and multi-sensor data, and collaborate across teams to drive reliable perception and control.

You’ll work on embedded robotics software in Linux environments, implement real-time algorithms in C++/Python, train ML models, and help production deployments.