Perception Robotics Engineer - MA - Start Up

Robotics Perception Engineer (Systems & Sensor Infrastructure)

Massachusetts- On site

$125,000–$200,000 + Equity

I'm partnering with an exciting robotics company that's building next-generation intelligent robotic systems, and they're looking for a Robotics Perception Engineer to own one of the most critical parts of their platform.

Before I spoke with the hiring manager, they made one thing very clear:

This is not a traditional Perception Engineer role.

If your background is primarily in computer vision research or training perception models, this probably isn't the right fit.

Instead, they're looking for an engineer who enjoys working closer to the hardware than the models, someone who loves building the software that makes an entire robotic sensing stack reliable, performant and production-ready.

If you've spent your career integrating cameras, LiDARs and sensors into real robotic systems, debugging problems on physical hardware and building software that simply cannot fail, this is exactly the type of role they're hoping to find.

The Role

You'll take ownership of the software that sits between the robot's sensors and the higher-level robotics applications.

Working across the full sensing pipeline, you'll ensure that data from multiple cameras and LiDARs is synchronised, processed accurately, delivered with low latency and stored for future training and analysis.

This is a genuine systems engineering role where you'll work directly with robots every day rather than spending your time in simulation.

You'll be trusted with ownership from the outset and will quickly become responsible for one of the company's core robotics systems.

The Problems You'll Be Solving

This team is building robots that rely on large amounts of real-time sensor data to understand and interact with the world around them.

Some of the challenges include:

• Running multiple high-frame-rate RGB-D cameras alongside 3D LiDARs without dropped frames.
• Building reliable, low-latency perception pipelines capable of processing large amounts of sensor data in real time.
• Synchronising data across multiple sensors.
• Generating accurate point clouds for downstream robotics systems.
• Building tooling for calibration, diagnostics and monitoring.
• Debugging software directly on physical robotic hardware.
• Designing systems that remain reliable even when hardware inevitably misbehaves.
• Supporting both real-time robotics applications and large-scale dataset generation.

This is the type of engineering where performance, reliability and attention to detail matter just as much as writing clean code.

What You'll Be Doing

You'll have ownership across much of the sensing infrastructure, including:

• Integrating RGB, RGB-D and LiDAR sensors into production robotic systems.
• Developing low-level software in Python and/or C++.
• Building and improving perception pipelines.
• Working on sensor synchronisation and calibration.
• Improving runtime performance and reliability.
• Building internal tooling for diagnostics and monitoring.
• Debugging issues across hardware, firmware, operating systems and application software.
• Collaborating closely with robotics, controls and AI engineers to ensure downstream systems receive accurate, reliable sensor data.

The Type of Engineer They're Looking For

The hiring manager repeatedly described wanting a generalist rather than a specialist.

They're looking for someone who's comfortable moving between software, sensors and hardware without worrying too much about where one discipline ends and another begins.

This role will probably suit you if you've found yourself asking questions like:

• Why is this camera dropping frames?
• Why have these sensors drifted out of sync?
• Why is this point cloud unstable?
• Where is this latency coming from?
• How do we debug this on the robot itself?
• How do we make this pipeline more reliable?

They're far more interested in engineers who've owned complete systems than candidates who've spent years optimising one small part of a much larger platform.

Backgrounds That Tend to Translate Well

The company isn't hiring based on company names, they're hiring based on the problems you've solved.

Engineers from environments such as the following often have highly relevant experience:

• Robotics startups.
• Autonomous vehicles.
• Industrial robotics.
• Warehouse automation.
• Defence robotics.
• Mobile robotics.
• Drone or aerial robotics.
• Sensor-heavy autonomous systems.

Experience with technologies such as RGB-D cameras, stereo vision, LiDAR, IMUs, point clouds, sensor calibration, SLAM or multi-sensor perception pipelines would all be particularly valuable.

Why This Opportunity Stands Out

One of the things that impressed me most during the intake was the engineering culture.

Almost everyone in the R&D team works directly with robots every day.

This isn't an environment where engineers spend months writing software that never leaves simulation.

You'll be testing your work on physical robotic systems, solving real engineering problems and seeing the impact of what you build.

The engineering team is still relatively small, which means you'll have genuine ownership and the opportunity to influence technical direction far earlier than you would in many larger organisations.

They're working on some genuinely exciting problems in embodied AI and intelligent robotics, but they're equally focused on deploying those systems into the real world rather than leaving them as research projects.

What They're Looking For

You'll likely be a strong fit if you have:

• 2–5 years of experience building software for real robotic or autonomous systems.
• Strong Python and/or C++ skills.
• Experience integrating software with physical robotic hardware.
• Hands-on experience working with cameras, LiDARs, robot arms, grippers or other sensor-rich robotic systems.
• Experience debugging across sensors, hardware, application software and runtime issues.
• A systems engineering mindset with a desire to own problems end-to-end.
• A collaborative approach and an interest in working closely with exceptionally strong engineers.

Experience in startup or small-team robotics environments where you've owned cross-functional problems across hardware, software and deployment would be particularly valuable.

The hiring manager also values engineers who embrace modern AI-assisted development tools as part of their engineering workflow.

Interested?

If you're happiest building reliable robotics systems, working directly with physical hardware and taking ownership of challenging engineering problems from end to end, I'd love to tell you more.

This is an opportunity to join an exceptionally strong engineering team working on some genuinely difficult robotics problems, where your work will be deployed into the real world rather than remaining in a research environment.