Senior Robotics Engineer, Mission Autonomy

LinuxCareers; Irvine (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

FieldAI, a robotics AI company based in Irvine, seeks a Senior Robotics Engineer specializing in Mission Autonomy. You will design and implement intelligent decision-making frameworks that fuse perception outputs with world knowledge for real-time mission planning.

You will develop VLM-based mission controllers, enable online replanning, and lead multi-robot autonomy frameworks while ensuring safety and performance through rigorous testing.

Qualifications

• PhD in CS/EE/Robotics or related field
• 5+ years of AI-driven autonomy software on real robots
• Advanced Python and C++ with ROS/ROS 2, Linux, Git
• Experience with task and motion planning, VLM/LLM planners
• Strong problem-solving and ability to work independently
• Low-level robotic manipulation skills

Responsibilities

• Design and implement perception-aware mission autonomy systems that couple runtime perception outputs with world information to create unified semantic scene graphs for real-time mission planning with spatial reasoning and online replanning
• Develop VLM-based mission controllers that observe robot camera views and scene graphs, reason about mission progress, and select actions from reusable primitives with failure detection and recovery
• Support development of multi-robot mission autonomy frameworks for task allocation, execution monitoring, and coordination across heterogeneous robots
• Expand robotics testing frameworks through unit and integration tests to ensure system reliability, safety, and performance
• Lead technical efforts across teams and communicate effectively with all stakeholders on complex autonomy software systems

Skills

Python

C++

ROS/ROS 2

Linux

Git

Docker

Education

PhD in Computer Science / Electrical Engineering / Robotics

Tools

Gazebo

Isaac Sim

Docker

Job description

FieldAI, a robotics AI company based in Irvine, is seeking a Senior Robotics Engineer specializing in Mission Autonomy. The role involves designing and implementing intelligent decision-making frameworks for autonomous robotic platforms, coupling perception outputs with world information to enable real-time mission planning and execution.

What You'll Do

• Design and implement perception-aware mission autonomy systems that couple runtime perception outputs with world information to create unified semantic scene graphs enabling real-time mission planning with spatial reasoning and online task replanning
• Develop VLM-based mission controllers that observe robot camera views and scene graphs, reason about mission progress, and select actions from reusable primitives with failure detection and recovery capabilities
• Support development of multi-robot mission autonomy frameworks for task allocation, execution monitoring, and coordination across heterogeneous robots
• Expand robotics testing frameworks through unit and integration tests to ensure system reliability, safety, and performance
• Lead technical efforts across teams and communicate effectively with all stakeholders on complex autonomy software systems

What You Need

• PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or related field
• Advanced proficiency in Python programming, C++, ROS/ROS 2, Linux, Git, and Docker
• 5+ years of experience with AI-driven autonomy software deployed on real robots, including task and motion planning, VLM/LLM-based planners, state machines, and behavior trees
• Low-level robotic manipulation skills and strong problem-solving ability navigating complex software systems
• Strong work ethic, self-motivation, and ability to work independently while managing multiple priorities

Nice to Have

• Experience with simulation environments such as Gazebo or Isaac Sim
• Experience with heterogeneous multi-robot systems including UGV, UAV, and mobile manipulators
• Experience with LLM/VLM-based long-horizon planning and failure recovery in robotic systems