Senior Robotics Perception Engineer for Real-Time UAS

Zone 5 Technologies; United States; On-site; USD 155,000 - 185,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical benefits

Dental benefits

Vision benefits

401k with match

Paid time off

Job summary

Zone 5 Technologies is hiring a Senior Robotics Perception Engineer in the United States to design and optimize perception pipelines for autonomous flight systems. You will integrate self-state, target tracks, and environmental data to produce a coherent world view.

Expect collaboration with autonomy and mission software teams, plus deployment on embedded platforms. The role requires strong C++ for real-time systems, ROS2 and DDS experience, and a track record in perception, state estimation, or

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a related field, Master’s preferred; equivalent industry experience considered.
• 6–9+ years in robotics perception, state estimation, or sensor fusion.
• Proficiency in modern C++ for deterministic, real-time embedded systems.
• Hands-on ROS2 and DDS middleware experience in production systems.
• Experience developing nonlinear state estimators for real applications.
• Background in target tracking, SLAM, VIO, or multi-sensor fusion.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement target detection, tracking, and state estimation pipelines with robust track kinematics.
• Develop track initiation, maintenance, association, and termination logic under uncertainty.
• Tune nonlinear state estimators (EKF, UKF, PF) for target motion modeling.
• Model world state by fusing self-state, targets, terrain, threats, and mission context.
• Integrate outputs from VIO/SLAM and sensor fusion into a unified perception picture.
• Own perception architecture and define DDS interfaces for perception outputs.
• Build ROS2 nodes and libraries exposing perception capabilities with versioned interfaces.

Skills

C++ for real-time embedded systems

ROS2

DDS-based middleware

Nonlinear state estimators (EKF/UKF/PF

Target tracking / SLAM / VIO

Embedded compute deployment

Perception system architecture

communicating trade-offs to teams

Education

Bachelor's in Robotics / Aerospace / CS / EE / Applied Math (Master's preferred)

Tools

ROS2

DDS

NVIDIA Jetson

OpenVINS / VINS-Fusion / ORB-SLAM / GTSAM / Ceres

Job description

Zone 5 Technologies is hiring a Senior Robotics Perception Engineer in the United States to design and optimize perception pipelines for autonomous flight systems. You will integrate self-state, target tracks, and environmental data to produce a coherent world view.

Expect collaboration with autonomy and mission software teams, plus deployment on embedded platforms. The role requires strong C++ for real-time systems, ROS2 and DDS experience, and a track record in perception, state estimation, or