Staff Software Engineer SDS

### Role Overview As a Staff Software Engineer on the Secondary Driving System team, you will serve as a technical lead for SDS software, setting direction for algorithms, architectures, and system interfaces. You will own the end-to-end technical strategy for key SDS behaviors, including perception/prediction integration, planning, controls, and system-level interactions. You will balance hands-on technical work with cross-team leadership, guiding senior and mid-level engineers to deliver at scale. ### Key Responsibilities - **Technical Vision & Architecture**: Define architecture for SDS components, focusing on correctness, robustness, and predictable runtime behavior. Architect scalable, modular multi-sensor perception pipelines (camera, radar, lidar) and establish interfaces between perception/prediction and planning/controls. - **Lead High-Impact Projects**: Design and deliver multi-object tracking systems (e.g., Kalman filters, IMM) and drive the development of motion prediction for vehicles and VRUs using analytical and ML-based models. Evaluate trade-offs between traditional robotics and ML-based approaches to ensure production-ready solutions. - **Technical Excellence**: Design and implement critical components in modern C++ (C++17 or later), focusing on memory management, concurrency, and real-time behavior. Uphold high software quality standards through code reviews, automated testing, and observability. Optimize components to meet strict runtime performance and resource-usage requirements. - **Cross-Functional Alignment**: Partner with safety, systems engineering, and localization teams to ensure designs align with functional safety and redundancy requirements for fail-operational features. Represent SDS perception and prediction in cross-org forums. - **Leadership & Mentorship**: Provide technical mentorship to engineers, facilitate design reviews, and foster a healthy engineering culture focused on safety and reliability. ### Qualifications - BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical/Mechanical Engineering, or related field. - 8+ years of professional software engineering experience in robotics, autonomous vehicles, or complex real-time systems. - Strong proficiency in modern C++ (C++14/17+) and experience with Python for tooling/ML. - Demonstrated experience in perception, multi-sensor fusion (camera, radar, lidar), multi-object tracking, and motion prediction. - Proven track record of delivering robotics or autonomous driving software to production, including testing strategies and performance tuning.