Senior Principal Autonomy Engineer - Perception & Planning

Akkar; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Akkar is seeking a Principal Engineer to join an autonomy team building next-generation autonomous vehicle technology for complex, real-world environments. You will own the architecture and technical direction across perception, prediction, and planning within a high-performing organization.

You will lead the design of production-grade autonomy systems, mentor other engineers, and deliver production-ready software that operates safely and reliably at scale on autonomous vehicles.

Qualifications

• 10-15+ years of experience building production autonomous systems.
• Strong C++ and Python development experience.
• Experience deploying autonomy software on real vehicles at commercial scale.
• Knowledge of ROS/ROS 2 and distributed on-vehicle computing environments.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical direction for Perception, Prediction, Planning, or multiple areas across the autonomy stack.
• Design and evolve production-grade autonomy architecture with cross-functional influence across the entire software stack.
• Develop robust perception systems, including detection, tracking, classification, and multi-modal sensor fusion.
• Lead the design of prediction models for behaviour forecasting, intent inference, and complex edge-case handling.
• Architect planning systems for intelligent decision-making and autonomous vehicle behaviour.
• Partner with senior engineering leaders to drive technical strategy while mentoring other engineers through technical leadership.
• Deliver high-quality, production-ready software that operates reliably in safety-critical, real-world environments.

Skills

C++ development

Python development

ROS/ROS 2

Deep learning for autonomy

Autonomy architecture

Distributed on-vehicle computing

Tools

ROS/ROS 2

Job description

Akkar is seeking a Principal Engineer to join an autonomy team building next-generation autonomous vehicle technology for complex, real-world environments. You will own the architecture and technical direction across perception, prediction, and planning within a high-performing organization.

You will lead the design of production-grade autonomy systems, mentor other engineers, and deliver production-ready software that operates safely and reliably at scale on autonomous vehicles.