Senior Perception Engineer - Robotics

Work location: Union City, CA [Hybrid]

Third Wave Automation (TWA) is a rapidly growing startup that has demonstrated its core technology components, proven its market fit, and just closed its Series C funding. If you are excited about cutting edge machine learning, robotics that affects the real world, and want to join a company where your skills can have a huge impact, you’ll fit right in. TWA is applying modern machine learning to materials handling—delivering site-specific forklift navigation and infrastructure-free pallet handling that continuously adapts to changing floor configuration and warehouse demand.

We are looking for senior and principal level Robotics Engineers with strong Perception Engineering expertise to help advance the automation stack for our autonomous forklifts. As TWA expands with successful customer deployments, we are adding engineers who can improve the reliability, accuracy, and robustness of our perception systems in real-world warehouse environments.

This role will focus heavily on sensor processing, perception pipelines, object detection and tracking, environmental understanding, localization support, and perception-to-planning integration. The ideal candidate has hands-on experience building perception capabilities for deployed robotic systems and is comfortable working across adjacent areas such as prediction, motion planning, vehicle behavior, and system-level debugging.

You will be part of a core team working to pioneer new solutions while also driving product maturity to support our rapid growth projections. We empower our team with an AI-first engineering culture, leveraging LLMs and generative tools to accelerate problem-solving, automate the mundane, and allow engineers to focus on the high-level architectural, safety, and reliability challenges unique to autonomous robotics.

How You Can Make An Impact

• Own and improve core perception capabilities: Design, implement, and optimize perception algorithms that enable autonomous forklifts to reliably understand and operate in dynamic warehouse environments.
• Develop robust sensor processing pipelines: Work with data from LiDAR, vision, and other onboard sensors to improve detection, classification, tracking, segmentation, and environmental modeling.
• Improve perception performance in real-world conditions: Address noise, occlusion, sensor uncertainty, edge cases, dynamic obstacles, reflective surfaces, lighting variation, and other challenges common in warehouse and industrial environments.
• Integrate perception with planning and autonomy systems: Ensure perception outputs are accurate, timely, and usable by downstream planning, prediction, localization, vehicle command, and safety systems.
• Drive product maturity through deployed robotics: Translate field data, customer deployment learnings, and system failures into measurable improvements in perception reliability, autonomy performance, and customer outcomes.
• Build in an AI-first engineering environment: Leverage AI-assisted development tools such as Cursor, Gemini, GitHub Copilot, and LLM-based workflows to accelerate prototyping, testing, debugging, documentation, and code generation.
• Debug complex autonomy issues end-to-end: Investigate perception-driven autonomy failures, reproduce field issues, analyze logs and sensor data, and collaborate across robotics disciplines to identify root causes.
• Influence technical direction: Help shape the roadmap for perception and autonomy improvements as a key member of a small, empowered engineering team.
• Mentor and raise the technical bar: Provide technical leadership, contribute original ideas, mentor junior engineers, and help establish best practices for perception development, testing, and deployment.

Basic Qualifications

• At least 7+ years of industry experience with a Bachelor’s Degree in Robotics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related quantitative discipline.
• At least 5+ years of hands-on robotics or autonomy experience; final leveling and compensation will be determined by depth of technical expertise, demonstrated ownership, and interview results.
• Deep experience developing robot perception systems for real-world robotics, autonomous vehicles, warehouse automation, mobile robots, or similar deployed systems.
• Strong foundation in sensor processing, especially LiDAR and/or vision-based perception.
• Experience with one or more of the following: object detection, object tracking, segmentation, classification, sensor fusion, occupancy grids, scene understanding, obstacle detection, localization support, or mapping.
• Ability to reason about uncertainty, noisy sensor data, occlusion, latency, calibration, and other real-world perception challenges.
• Strong software development skills with the ability to write efficient, clean, reusable production-quality code in C++ and Python; command of OOP/OOD.
• Fluency in developing, debugging, and deploying robotics software inLinux-based environments.
• Experience integrating perception outputs into downstream autonomy systems such as motion planning, prediction, behavior planning, control, or safety systems.
• Track record of bringing important robotics or perception features from ideation through implementation, testing, deployment, and iteration.
• Fluency with AI-assisted development tools such as Cursor, Copilot, Gemini, or LLM-based workflows to augment development, testing, debugging, and deployment.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to explain complex perception concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced degree, Master’s or Ph.D., in Robotics, Computer Science, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Electrical Engineering, or a related quantitative field.
• Deep experience with LiDAR perception, computer vision, sensor fusion, or perception systems for autonomous mobile robots.
• Experience developing perception systems that operate in production, safety-critical, or mission-critical environments.
• Experience with warehouse automation, autonomous forklifts, autonomous vehicles, AMRs, AGVs, industrial robotics, or other deployed robotic platforms.
• Familiarity with SLAM, localization, mapping, calibration, and their relationship to perception system performance.
• Experience analyzing large volumes of robot logs, field data, or sensor data to improve system performance.
• Experience with simulation, data replay, scenario testing, automated evaluation, or perception performance metrics.
• A proven history of providing technical leadership and mentoring junior engineers.
• Experience supporting shipping products and working through field deployment issues.
• Experience with safety systems or certification requirements such as ISO 3691, ISO 13849, CE Marking, or related standards.

TWA offers a robust set of benefits and perks:

• Comprehensive benefits. Health, Dental, Vision, and a 401k matching program, to boot!
• Flexible working schedule. Be productive when you work best.
• Show & Tell. We love to learn from one another, and see the cool stuff everyone is working on!
• Lunch is provided every day!
• Stacks of snacks. Donuts are a main food group, and the snack shelf is always stocked with a wide variety of items.
• Great teammates. One of the best parts of working here!

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We value each person's expertise and experiences. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

All qualified applicants able to work in the United States are encouraged to apply. We are unable to sponsor H-1 visas subject to fees required by the ‘Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers’ Presidential Proclamation dated September 21, 2025.

This job is based in Union City at least three days a week and offers no relocation assistance. The pay range for this position is $160,000 - $250,000/yr+ benefits+equity; however, base pay offered will vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.