Senior Autonomy Architect – Underwater Robotics

Alumni Founders; Richmond (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 235,000; Full time

Job summary

Bedrock Ocean Exploration in Richmond, CA seeks a Staff Robotics Engineer to set the technical direction for autonomy and vehicle software across our autonomous underwater vehicles. You will own the architecture tying onboard software, GNC/state estimation, sensing, and mission autonomy to keep long-duration campaigns reliable.

You will mentor engineers, raise standards, and champion AI adoption while supporting 24–72 hour campaigns, with on-site work in Richmond.

Qualifications

• 8+ years building robotics or autonomous-systems software in production environments.
• Staff-level technical leadership across subsystems or teams.
• Experience standardizing and safely deploying software across a fleet, including OTA updates.
• Willingness to work on-site in the Richmond, CA office.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture of the vehicle software system and drive modular design across onboard software, GNC/state estimation, sensing, and mission autonomy.
• Lead cross-disciplinary robotics problems end to end, anticipating future missions and reducing cost of change.
• Set and raise standards for building, testing, and validating vehicle software, using quality metrics.
• Drive testing across simulation, hardware-in-the-loop, and field trials, diagnosing issues across the software domain.
• Mentor robotics engineers and promote technical alignment across GNC, hardware, sensing, and software.
• Champion practical AI adoption within the robotics workflow and ensure production-quality outputs.

Skills

C++

Python

ROS/ROS2

GNC

State estimation

Sensor fusion

Autonomy

Technical leadership

Job description

Bedrock Ocean Exploration in Richmond, CA seeks a Staff Robotics Engineer to set the technical direction for autonomy and vehicle software across our autonomous underwater vehicles. You will own the architecture tying onboard software, GNC/state estimation, sensing, and mission autonomy to keep long-duration campaigns reliable.

You will mentor engineers, raise standards, and champion AI adoption while supporting 24–72 hour campaigns, with on-site work in Richmond.