Senior Navigation & State Estimation Engineer

theseus-us; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

Theseus, based in San Francisco, is seeking a Senior Navigation Software Engineer to lead the real‑time navigation and state estimation components at the core of our autonomy stack. You will own end‑to‑end navigation, design sensor fusion pipelines, and build estimators that are robust to real‑world failure modes and compute constraints.

The role requires 4+ years in robotics navigation, deep probabilistic estimation knowledge, and strong C++/Python software skills, with collaboration across

Qualifications

• 4+ years of robotics navigation or state estimation experience.
• Deep understanding of probabilistic estimation methods.
• Strong intuition for inertial sensing and real-world failure modes.
• Experience building estimation systems with real sensor data.
• Excellent software engineering skills in C++ and Python.

Responsibilities

• Own navigation and state estimation end to end, from algorithm design to deployment and field iteration.
• Design and improve sensor fusion pipelines for reliable navigation outputs.
• Build estimators robust to real-world failure modes, degraded sensing, and limited compute.
• Define system behavior across initialization, nominal operation, degradation, and recovery.
• Drive architecture decisions across the navigation stack balancing accuracy and latency.
• Collaborate with autonomy, platform, and flight systems engineers to integrate navigation.
• Test, debug, and improve system performance in simulation and real flight conditions.

Skills

4+ years robotics navigation

Probabilistic estimation

Inertial sensing expertise

System-level thinking

Excellent communication

Tools

C++

Python

Kalman filtering

Sensor fusion

Job description

Theseus, based in San Francisco, is seeking a Senior Navigation Software Engineer to lead the real‑time navigation and state estimation components at the core of our autonomy stack. You will own end‑to‑end navigation, design sensor fusion pipelines, and build estimators that are robust to real‑world failure modes and compute constraints.

The role requires 4+ years in robotics navigation, deep probabilistic estimation knowledge, and strong C++/Python software skills, with collaboration across