Staff Autonomy Engineer (Drone)

Overview

Own the core autonomy software stack for Gather AI's drone platform, including perception, localization, and scanning pipelines that run on vehicle-mounted hardware in production warehouses. This is a Staff-level individual contributor role with significant technical ownership.

What you'll do

• Own the autonomy software stack for Gather products, including perception, localization, and inventory scanning pipelines running on vehicle-mounted embedded compute
• Contribute to the architecture of the product autonomy stack as the product scales to more vehicle types, facility layouts, and customer configurations
• Document existing systems, plan future revisions, and contribute and lead design improvements and testing
• Solve problems across the autonomy stack
• Design and implement algorithms that reliably detect, identify, and record inventory locations as forklifts and drones move through warehouse aisles under variable lighting, occlusion, and motion
• Improve scan accuracy and coverage through algorithmic improvements, better sensor integration, and tighter coordination with the ML perception models
• Build and maintain the software systems that manage scan triggering, location mapping, and data handoff to the cloud platform
• Collaborate with hardware and field teams to diagnose and resolve issues on deployed systems, using log data and field observations to drive improvements

What you'll need

• 7+ years of software engineering experience
• At least 3 years building autonomy, robotics, or perception systems that run on physical hardware in production
• Strong C++ and Python
• Experience writing software that runs on embedded or resource-constrained compute platforms
• Hands-on experience with computer vision pipelines including camera-based detection, localization, or tracking in real-world environments
• Experience building and debugging software on deployed systems, including log-based diagnosis and field iteration
• Comfort operating at Staff level: setting technical direction, making consequential architecture decisions, and taking end-to-end ownership of a system

Nice to have

• Experience with ROS2 or similar robotics middleware in a production context
• Background in warehouse, logistics, or industrial automation environments
• Familiarity with sensor fusion, calibration, or multi-camera systems
• Experience with SLAM, odometry, or other localization approaches on mobile platforms

Details

• Location: Open to Remote (USA); Pittsburgh, PA