Senior Perception Engineer: Robotics & ML

John Deere; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 124,584 - 186,864; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible work arrangements

Healthcare benefits with generous HSA

401K and Defined Contribution

Job summary

John Deere is seeking a Senior Perception Engineer in Santa Clara, CA, to advance perception across the autonomy stack using C++ and ML. You’ll work on data ingestion, model execution, and real-time interfaces, collaborating with robotics and platform teams to ensure robust system integration.

The role emphasizes production-focused ML deployment, real-time performance, and clean, maintainable perception code. A strong background in ROS 2, embedded platforms, and sensor data is required.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in CS, EE, Robotics, or related field.
• Master’s degree preferred.
• Coursework in perception, ML, or robotics software architecture is preferred.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain perception capabilities across the full autonomy stack—from onboard C++ systems to ML models.
• Maintain perception pipeline components: data ingestion, labeling, model execution, and downstream interfaces.
• Diagnose and resolve perception failures using logs and sensor data, tracing issues to root cause.
• Implement and optimize C++ modules on embedded/edge platforms for real-time performance.
• Train, evaluate, and deploy ML models for detection, segmentation, tracking, and scene understanding.
• Refactor legacy components to improve quality and reduce technical debt.
• Collaborate with robotics, systems, and platform teams to meet system-level requirements.
• Contribute to engineering culture through code reviews, design discussions, and best-practices sharing.

Skills

C++

Applied ML for perception

Software debugging

Sensor data handling

Cross-system collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/EE/Robotics or related field

Master's degree preferred

Tools

ROS 2

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Docker

CMake

Bazel

colcon

Job description

John Deere is seeking a Senior Perception Engineer in Santa Clara, CA, to advance perception across the autonomy stack using C++ and ML. You’ll work on data ingestion, model execution, and real-time interfaces, collaborating with robotics and platform teams to ensure robust system integration.

The role emphasizes production-focused ML deployment, real-time performance, and clean, maintainable perception code. A strong background in ROS 2, embedded platforms, and sensor data is required.