Robotics Software Engineer: LiDAR & Camera Perception on GPU

Socket.dev; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Salary & equity

Health coverage

401(k)

Flexible vacation

Collaborative culture

Cutting-edge tech

Job summary

Socket.dev in Sunnyvale, CA, seeks a hands-on software engineer to own LiDAR and camera perception software end-to-end on robots and compute platforms. You will drive sensor data through a robotics stack, delivering calibrated point clouds and images with GPU-accelerated processing, calibration tooling, and data recording capabilities.

You will collaborate with hardware, silicon, and manufacturing teams, building reusable components while maintaining Docker images, ROS 2 distributions,

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience with real sensors or hardware.
• Expert-level modern C++ (C++17 or newer) and Python, including CMake-based builds and Python packaging.
• Hands-on ROS 2 and Linux systems programming, incl. networking and multi-threaded data paths.
• CUDA or GPU compute framework experience and deployment on NVIDIA Jetson/embedded GPUs.
• Proven ability to build Docker-based dev environments and CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI/Jenkins).

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain sensor drivers, ROS 2 packages, and SDK components that deliver LiDAR and camera data to robotics stacks.
• Build GPU-accelerated processing for point clouds and images, with Python bindings.
• Own time synchronization and high-bandwidth data paths for Ethernet sensors (PTP, packet parsing, frame assembly).
• Design and maintain calibration, KPI, and end-of-line test pipelines for manufacturing and bring-up.
• Build recording, playback, and visualization tooling (pcap, MCAP, Foxglove, video) for debugging sensor data.
• Own the developer platform: Docker images, ROS 2 distributions, packaging, and CI/CD release automation.
• Act as first responder for integration issues; reproduce problems from logs, fix root causes, update tooling/docs.
• Collaborate across hardware, silicon, algorithm, and manufacturing teams; document and write modular code.
• Use AI-assisted coding tools to move faster without sacrificing correctness.

Skills

C++

Python

ROS 2

Linux

CUDA

Docker

GitLab CI

CMake

Multi-threading

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

MS or PhD in related field (plus)

Tools

NVIDIA Jetson

NVIDIA Holoscan

TensorRT

Docker

GitLab CI

Jenkins

CMake

CUDA

Job description

Socket.dev in Sunnyvale, CA, seeks a hands-on software engineer to own LiDAR and camera perception software end-to-end on robots and compute platforms. You will drive sensor data through a robotics stack, delivering calibrated point clouds and images with GPU-accelerated processing, calibration tooling, and data recording capabilities.

You will collaborate with hardware, silicon, and manufacturing teams, building reusable components while maintaining Docker images, ROS 2 distributions,