Senior Perception Software Engineer — Maritime Autonomy, Equity

InvestedintheMission; Alameda (CA); On-site; USD 215,000 - 270,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity grants

401(k) plan

Relocation support

Generous PTO

Professional development reimbursement

Job summary

Saildrone in Alameda, CA, is seeking a Staff Software Engineer, Perception to join the Perception team. You will architect and deliver perception systems that enable real-time detection, tracking, and classification of vessels across our autonomous fleet, advancing maritime intelligence and security.

You will work on high-performance C++ software for NVIDIA Jetson/AGX, fuse radar and camera data with Kalman/Particle filters, and collaborate with ML, Autonomy, Hardware, and UI teams to ensure

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or a related field.
• 10+ years of production perception/autonomy systems experience, with significant C++ on real-time embedded/edge platforms.
• Deep experience with Radar/Camera perception, GPU pipelines (CUDA), and ROS in real-time/edge environments.
• Proven ability to solve complex tracking/classification in high-noise maritime environments using advanced filtering (Kalman/Particle).
• Strong track record of system-level tradeoffs across sensing, compute, power budgets, and deployment realities.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and optimize perception algorithms to detect, track, and classify maritime targets.
• Own high-performance C++ systems on NVIDIA Jetson/AGX for real-time stacks.
• Architect multi-sensor fusion pipelines with Radar, Camera, AIS data; use Kalman/Particle filters.
• Lead integration with Hardware and Systems teams for long deployments.
• Monitor and optimize GPU-accelerated signal processing and ML models for onboard execution.
• Develop large-scale regression frameworks and analyze mission telemetry.
• Collaborate with UI/Platform teams to ensure clear perception visualization.

Skills

C++

ROS

CUDA

Python

Radar/Camera perception

Kalman/Particle filtering

Edge computing

Real-time embedded/edge platforms

Education

Bachelor's/Master's in CS/EE/Robotics or related

Tools

NVIDIA Jetson/AGX

Job description

Saildrone in Alameda, CA, is seeking a Staff Software Engineer, Perception to join the Perception team. You will architect and deliver perception systems that enable real-time detection, tracking, and classification of vessels across our autonomous fleet, advancing maritime intelligence and security.

You will work on high-performance C++ software for NVIDIA Jetson/AGX, fuse radar and camera data with Kalman/Particle filters, and collaborate with ML, Autonomy, Hardware, and UI teams to ensure