Staff Robotics Engineer, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Bedrock Ocean Exploration; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 235,000; Full time

Job summary

Bedrock Ocean Exploration in Richmond, CA, is seeking a Staff Robotics Engineer to set the technical direction for autonomy and vehicle software across a fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles. You’ll own architecture spanning onboard software, GNC, sensing, and mission autonomy, ensuring robust, scalable systems for long-duration campaigns.

You will lead cross-disciplinary robotics challenges, raise standards for testing, and champion practical AI adoption to keep campaigns reliable at sea.

Qualifications

• 8+ years building robotics or autonomous-systems software, including 5–7+ years in a production robotics setting
• Deep experience architecting robust, modular vehicle/autonomy software
• Experience standardizing and safely deploying software across a fleet; OTA updates, versioning, rollback
• Comfort with safety-critical systems, field operations, and on-call rotation
• Excellent communication and ability to drive alignment across robotics, hardware, and software

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture of the vehicle software system and drive its modular design across subsystems
• Lead cross-disciplinary robotics problems end-to-end
• Set and raise standards for robotics software testing and validation
• Drive testing across simulation, hardware-in-the-loop, and field trials
• Improve autonomy and vehicle behaviors for long, continuous missions
• Own fault management and vehicle health end-to-end (FDIR)
• Share on-call rotation and build runbooks, telemetry, and escalation paths
• Design for fleet scale with OTA deployment and versioning

Skills

C++

Python

ROS/ROS2

GNC

State estimation

Sensor fusion

Autonomy architecture

Staff-level leadership

Cross-functional alignment

Tools

ROS/ROS2

Job description

Bedrock Ocean Exploration in Richmond, CA, is seeking a Staff Robotics Engineer to set the technical direction for autonomy and vehicle software across a fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles. You’ll own architecture spanning onboard software, GNC, sensing, and mission autonomy, ensuring robust, scalable systems for long-duration campaigns.

You will lead cross-disciplinary robotics challenges, raise standards for testing, and champion practical AI adoption to keep campaigns reliable at sea.