Technical Lead - Autonomy Evaluation

Atoms; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 185,000 - 242,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, Vision insurance

Equity

Paid time off

Job summary

Atoms is building machines that power the next era of progress in San Francisco. We seek a Technical Lead for Autonomy Evaluation to own the metrics our autonomy releases are judged on and the log replay and evaluation platform that computes them.

You will take evaluation from recorded logs to scored regression suites for every release. You will develop how replay, scoring, metrics, and test coverage come together into a single platform used daily by engineers, across on-road vehicles.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS/Robotics/EE/Statistics with 8+ years of relevant experience.
• Experience leading evaluation or test teams for autonomous systems or large-scale ML evaluation.
• Hands-on experience building log replay at scale with scoring against ground truth.

Responsibilities

• Own safety and behavior metrics and go/no-go criteria for releases.
• Build and own the log replay and scoring pipeline across perception, localization, and planning.
• Benchmark software across logs and design evaluation datasets for regression detection.
• Ensure deterministic, reproducible evaluation with traceability to software versions.
• Mentor engineers, define testing practices, and participate in hiring.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to advance evaluation infrastructure.

Skills

Python

C++

Statistics

Log replay

GPU compute

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Statistics, or a related field

Tools

GPU clusters

Log replay tooling

Robotics middleware

Job description

Atoms is building the machines that power the next era of progress.

Over the last decade, software has transformed the digital world. But the physical world, where food is made, minerals are mined, goods are moved, and industries are run, remains far less intelligent, far less efficient, and far more constrained. We’re changing that.

Atoms builds Physical AI— real-world robots for the industries that move civilization forward, starting with food, mining, and transport. Our systems are designed to understand, predict, and control the real world with precision, turning complex physical operations into something more reliable, more scalable, and more productive.

This work requires more than robotics. It requires deep integration across hardware, software, AI, operations, manufacturing, and real estate. We don’t just build machines in a lab. We deploy them into real environments, operate them, learn from them, and improve them until they work at scale.

We are roboticists, engineers, operators, and builders. We believe the next great technology companies will not only transform information, but the physical systems that shape everyday life.

If you want to work on hard problems with real-world impact, join us.

About the role

We are seeking a Technical Lead for Autonomy Evaluation to own the metrics our autonomy releases are judged on and the log replay and evaluation platform that computes them. In this role, you will take evaluation from recorded logs, to scored regression suites running on every candidate release, to the report a release passes before it reaches a vehicle, developing how replay, scoring, metrics, and test coverage come together into one platform engineers use every day. You will do this across on-road vehicles, and you will build the evaluation infrastructure that lets each new software release, sensor configuration, and platform be assessed seamlessly.

What you’ll do

• Metrics. Own the safety and behavior metrics a release is judged on, including collision and near-miss measures, trajectory agreement against ground truth, and comfort, and the go/no-go release criteria built on them.
• Log replay and scoring. Own the pipeline that converts recorded logs into scored test cases, covering open-loop and closed-loop evaluation of perception, localization, and planning against ground truth.
• Regression and benchmarking. Own the system that benchmarks new software against old across the log corpus for every candidate release, including evaluation dataset design, regression detection, and triage of a regressed case to an owner.
• Test coverage and data mining. Own how the corpus is mined for the long tail of rare and important events, including sampling strategy, selection of logs by expected value per replay-hour, and coverage of scenario classes the corpus does not yet contain.
• Execution at scale. Own deterministic and reproducible execution of evaluation, run identity, traceability of every result to a software version, and cost per replay-hour as a tracked number.
• Engineering practices. Set the practices for metric definitions, test design, code review, and the write-up of evaluation results.
• Technical standard. Mentor the engineers who join the function, set the technical bar for their work, and participate in hiring.

What we’re looking for

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Statistics, or a related field with 8+ years of relevant experience.
• 2+ years as a technical lead or engineering manager for an evaluation, validation, or test team.
• Ownership of an offline or system-level evaluation system for an autonomous vehicle or robotics program, or a comparable large-scale ML model evaluation system in production, with accountability for the metrics and for the release decisions made on them.
• Experience designing safety or behavior metrics for an autonomous system and defending them to engineering and executive audiences.
• Hands‑on experience building log replay at scale, including scoring against ground truth in open‑loop and closed‑loop evaluation.
• Experience running evaluation pipelines on GPU clusters or comparable large‑scale compute on a recurring cadence, with responsibility for reproducibility, throughput, and compute cost.
• Experience with evaluation dataset design, benchmarking, and regression detection across software or model versions.
• Working command of applied statistics for system validation, including statistical uncertainty, sampling, rare‑event analysis, and the data volume a given claim requires.
• Working understanding of autonomous systems end to end, including sensing, perception, localization, planning, and controls.
• Experience on an autonomous vehicle or robotics platform.
• Working experience with a robotics middleware and its logging and replay tooling.
• Experience handling autonomous driving or robotics sensor data across multiple modalities and timestamps, including camera, LiDAR, and radar.
• Proficiency in Python and the ability to read, navigate, and debug existing C++ codebases.

What else you need to know

This role is based in our San Francisco office location. As a company driven by innovation and continuous change, close collaboration is essential. We’re constantly reimagining our industry, creating new products, and refining our processes, and we do our best work together. That’s why all of our office‑based teams work onsite, five days a week.

Ready to join us as we serve those who serve others?

The base salary range for this role is $185,000 - $242,000 per year.

Actual compensation will be determined on an individual basis and may vary depending on experience, skills, and qualifications.

Base salary is just one part of your total rewards package. You may also be eligible for equity awards.

Benefits Summary (USA Full-Time Exempt Employees):

• Medical, Dental, Vision, Disability, and Life Insurance
• Flexible Spending Account / Health Savings Account Options
• 401(k)
• Equity
• Sick Time, Unlimited Flexible Time Off, and Paid Holidays
• Team lunch in our SoMa office every Tuesday and Thursday

Benefits are subject to change at the company's discretion.
Atoms accepts applications on an ongoing basis.

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As set forth in Atoms’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.