Software Engineer - Perception

Watney; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Watney Robotics is seeking a backend or data infrastructure engineer to design and scale the platform layer that powers our perception workflows, including automated data mining, multimodal ingestion pipelines, and parallelized regression backbones.

You will own the perception data engine, build continuous evaluation infrastructure, scale annotation and feature extraction, and drive quality metrics while ensuring deterministic performance across edge deployments.

Qualifications

• Experience building high-throughput data platforms and distributed streaming systems.
• Design scalable data pipelines and storage for multimodal media formats (video, telemetry).
• Experience with closed-loop testing infrastructure, regression frameworks, or metric tracking engines for complex software.
• Strong knowledge of geometry computer vision, 3D spatial data, or ML workflow metadata orchestration.

Responsibilities

• Own the Perception Data Engine: architect and optimize scalable off-robot data pipelines for petabyte-scale video and sensor streams.
• Build Continuous Evaluation Infrastructure: design deterministic simulation, regression testing, and evaluation loops for edge deployment benchmarking.
• Scale Annotation & Feature Extraction: develop high-throughput pipelines for multimodal data fusion, automated labeling, and feature extraction.
• Drive Quality Metrics & Monitoring: establish telemetry and observability to track regression, drift, and perception accuracy across live environments.

Job description

Our Mission

Expand human ambition in the physical world.

Critical infrastructure is constrained by labor shortages, hazardous working conditions, and operational complexity. Watney builds and deploys autonomous robotic systems that increase the speed and capacity of buildout, starting with data centers.

About the Role

At Watney, the perception loop is the critical foundation that allows our robots to operate reliably in unstructured environments. This is an opportunity to build the high-throughput data engines, distributed streaming architectures, and deterministic evaluation platforms that power our entire perception lifecycle from raw physical telemetry to deployed edge models.

We are looking for someone who wants to design and scale the platform layer that orchestrates our core perception workflows, including automated data mining, multimodal ingestion pipelines, and parallelized regression backbones. The ideal candidate is an experienced backend or data infrastructure engineer eager to build the foundational data engine for autonomous fleets.

What You’ll Do

• Own the Perception Data Engine: Architect and optimize scalable off-robot data pipelines capable of ingesting, parsing, and managing petabyte-scale video and sensor streams for auto-annotation and localization tasks.
• Build Continuous Evaluation Infrastructure: Design and implement deterministic simulation, regression testing, and evaluation loops to rigorously benchmark perception performance before edge deployment.
• Scale Annotation & Feature Extraction: Develop high-throughput pipelines that orchestrate multimodal data fusion, automated labeling, and feature extraction to constantly mine high-signal training examples from the field.
• Drive Quality Metrics & Monitoring: Establish end-to-end telemetry systems and observability frameworks to track model regression, data drift, and perception accuracy across live operational environments.

You May Be a Good Fit If You:

• Have experience building high-throughput data platforms, large-scale distributed streaming systems, or infrastructure for autonomous robotics.
• Have a proven track record designing scalable data pipelines and storage solutions tailored for heavy multimodal media formats (high-frame-rate video, unstructured telemetry).
• Bring deep experience building closed-loop testing infrastructure, regression frameworks, or automated metric tracking engines for highly complex, non-deterministic software systems.
• Exhibit a high technical competency in geometric computer vision fundamentals, 3D spatial data handling, or metadata orchestration for machine learning workflows.

We’re committed to building a diverse, inclusive team. At Watney Robotics, we welcome people of all backgrounds and identities, and we make hiring decisions based on skills, experience, and potential. If you’re passionate about robotics but don’t meet every requirement, we still encourage you to apply!