Principal Software Engineer, Team Lead - Perception Platforms

The Principal Software Engineer, Team Lead - Perception Platforms will lead the development of critical machine learning infrastructure that enables autonomous vehicles to understand and navigate the world around them. This senior technical leadership role sits at the intersection of ML infrastructure, perception systems, and large-scale data engineering. You will lead a high-performing team responsible for building and optimizing data pipelines, model training workflows, evaluation frameworks, and visualization tools. Working closely with machine learning engineers and research scientists, you will help accelerate development from experimentation through deployment and ongoing improvement. You will shape technical strategy, mentor engineers, and drive engineering excellence while remaining actively involved in production-level coding. This is an opportunity to contribute to advanced autonomous driving technology with the potential to improve transportation safety, accessibility, and reliability.

• At least 7 years of professional software engineering experience, including 3 or more years in formal or informal technical leadership, mentoring, or team leadership.

• At least 2 years of experience developing, operating, or supporting distributed machine learning training across clusters of GPU nodes.

• Bachelor's or master's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline.

• Strong commitment to remaining hands-on, with a proven ability to contribute high-quality, production-level code to shared software projects.

• Proficiency in Python and familiarity with data processing libraries such as NumPy and Pandas.

• Extensive backend development experience and a demonstrated ability to design and lead the architecture of complex software systems.

• Strong understanding of machine learning or perception systems, with the ability to guide the development of supporting infrastructure and tooling.

• Demonstrated experience designing and delivering data visualization tools, internal dashboards, or engineering interfaces that support data-driven decisions.

• Expert knowledge of software engineering principles, including software design, source control, build processes, code reviews, and testing methodologies.

• Proven ability to lead and mentor engineers, establish technical direction, and promote engineering best practices.

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to articulate a technical vision, collaborate across disciplines, and motivate a team.

• Expertise in concurrency, parallel processing, and database systems is a plus.

• Experience with distributed computing frameworks such as Kubernetes (K8s) and Ray is preferred.

• Experience developing and deploying perception systems for autonomous vehicles or robotics is highly desirable.

• A PhD in a relevant field, or equivalent industry experience demonstrating continued technical development, is an advantage.

• Proficiency in modern C++, including C++14, C++17, or later, is beneficial.

• Experience building products using contemporary large language models (LLMs) and Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a plus.

• Familiarity with GPU-accelerated data processing and machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow is desirable.

• Strong project management skills and a track record of successfully delivering complex technical projects.