Sensor & Perception Engineer, Robotics Hardware

About the Role

FieldAI's Irvine team is dedicated to integrating embodied AI with real robots, sensors, and field deployments. We focus on building risk-aware, reliable, and field-ready AI systems to tackle complex robotics challenges and maximize the potential of embodied intelligence. Our work goes beyond typical data-driven or transformer-only architectures, combining rigorous engineering with learning systems proven in global deployments.

The Hardware Team develops perception and compute payloads for autonomous robotics systems in complex real-world environments. Our work spans the full hardware stack, including the design and integration of sensing systems, embedded compute, electrical systems, and mechanical components. We focus on both development (research, design, prototyping, testing) and operations (production, testing, QA, debugging). We are a small, fast-moving team committed to improving core capabilities, system reliability, and system scalability, while also building operational systems and procedures from the ground up.

As a Sensor Systems Engineer on the Hardware Team, you will contribute to the design, integration, calibration, and validation of the sensing systems that underpin our autonomy stack. You will work with a diverse array of sensors, ensuring accurate, time-synchronized, and spatially consistent data across various environments and operating conditions. Collaboration with autonomy, compute, electrical, and mechanical teams is essential for building tightly integrated solutions ready for deployment in challenging field environments. While your focus will be on sensors, contributions across all hardware domains are expected.

Key Responsibilities

• Sensor System Design

• Define sensing requirements by collaborating with hardware and software teams.

• Identify, test, and select sensors such as LiDARs, depth cameras, GPS, IMUs, and ToF devices.

• Integrate sensors with electrical (USB, Ethernet, I2C, CAN, GMSL), mechanical (mounts, jigs, isolation), and software (configurations, drivers, ROS nodes) systems, ensuring power, thermal, and protocol compatibility.

• Architect systems to meet spatial sampling performance requirements including spatial coverage, range, resolution, and transform accuracy.

• Implement and validate synchronization strategies, triggering schemes, timestamp encoding, and end-to-end latency minimization.

• Sensor System Implementation

• Evaluate sensor performance (spatial resolution, temporal drift, EMI noise, sync errors) and test under real-world environmental conditions (vibration, lighting, moisture, temperature).

• Design and execute intrinsic and extrinsic calibrations, building alignment rigs and calibration boards as needed.

• Tune sensor configurations (exposure, gain, filtering, frame rate) and processing pipelines for optimal performance.

• Create timing diagrams, sensor maps, coordinate transforms, and maintain all configuration files, launch scripts, driver references, and firmware states.

• Sensor System Production & Servicing

• Procure sensors with vendors and develop QA checks for incoming units.

• Support payload integration and manufacturing at scale.

• Conduct root cause analysis of sensor systems, including issues across hardware and software boundaries.

• Develop protocols for monitoring sensing system health, data quality, and calibration status during field deployments.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Education: B.S., M.S. or Ph.D. in Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Engineering Physics, Physics, or a related field.
• Hands-On Sensors Experience: Hands-on work with perception sensors such as LiDAR, depth cameras, IMUs, GPS.
• Systems Thinking: Cross-functional collaboration experience across electrical, mechanical, and software teams.
• Sensor Physics: Strong foundation in optics, signal processing, and electromagnetic wave propagation.
• Lab Skills: Hands-on testing, calibration, and debugging skills (using tools like oscilloscopes, analyzing logs, working with vibration/thermal setups).
• Communication Protocols: Experience with protocols such as USB, Ethernet, GMSL, CAN, I2C, and CSI.
• Computer & Software: Experience working with ROS/ROS2, sensor drivers, coordinate transforms (TF), and timing protocols (PTP, NTP, etc.).
• Timing & Triggers: Experience with timestamping, synchronization, triggering, and latency constraints.
• Calibration & Characterization: Experience designing and executing intrinsic, extrinsic, and temporal calibrations, along with sensor characterization under real-world environmental conditions.
• Simulation: Experience in high-fidelity simulation environments (e.g., Gazebo, Isaac Sim, RViz) for sensor modeling.

What Will Set You Apart

• Experience scaling systems from prototype to large-scale production.
• Experience developing systems for harsh field environments.
• Experience working on robotics deployed in real-world settings such as autonomous vehicles, drones, or ruggedized robots.
• Fluency across software, electrical, and mechanical systems.
• Knowledge of autonomy stacks used in robotics and how sensor performance impacts autonomy algorithms.