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Rhoda AI

Robot Perception Engineer

Posted Yesterday
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In-Office
Palo Alto, CA, USA
Mid level
In-Office
Palo Alto, CA, USA
Mid level
Develop and maintain real-time perception pipelines for humanoid robots: sensor integration and calibration, object detection/tracking, low-latency streaming to models and teleop, safety-certified perception, field bring-up, and reliability/fault recovery.
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At Rhoda AI, we’re building the next generation of generalist intelligent robots. We own the full robotics stack from high-performance hardware and robot systems to the infrastructure and state-of-the-art foundation world models that control our robots. Our robots are designed to be generalists capable of operating in complex, real-world environments and handling long-tail edge cases, made possible by our cutting edge research and end-to-end system design. We've raised over $400M and are investing aggressively in model research, infrastructure, hardware development, and manufacturing scale-up to make generalist robotics a reality.

We're looking for a Robot Perception Engineer to develop and maintain the perception systems that give our humanoid robots a real-time understanding of the world around them. You'll own the software that transforms raw sensor data into reliable, actionable perception — from sensor integration and calibration to safety-certified object detection and streaming data to our foundation models and teleoperation stack.

What You'll Do

  • Develop and maintain real-time perception pipelines — integrating and calibrating sensors (cameras, LiDAR, IMUs, depth sensors) with our humanoid robot platforms

  • Build and optimize object detection, tracking, and scene understanding systems for safe operation in complex, unstructured environments

  • Own the streaming infrastructure that delivers sensor data reliably to foundation models, teleoperation systems, and onboard control stacks

  • Work closely with the AI/ML team to bridge perception outputs and learned policy inputs — ensuring low-latency, high-reliability data delivery

  • Implement and validate safety-certified perception components, including object detection and collision avoidance, to meet real-world deployment requirements

  • Support bring-up and field testing of new camera hardware and sensor configurations

  • Contribute to system reliability, fault detection, and recovery logic for robust real-world perception

What We're Looking For

  • 4+ years of experience in robotics perception, computer vision, or a closely related field

  • Strong software engineering fundamentals in C++, Python, or Rust

  • Hands-on experience with sensor integration and calibration (cameras, LiDAR, IMUs, depth sensors)

  • Experience building real-time perception pipelines on embedded or edge compute platforms

  • Familiarity with streaming and networking systems for low-latency sensor data transport

  • Experience with ROS/ROS2 or similar robotics middleware in production or research contexts

  • Ability to debug across the full stack — from driver-level sensor issues to perception behavior on live hardware

Nice to Have (But Not Required)

  • Experience with safety-certified or safety-critical perception systems (e.g., ISO 26262, IEC 61508, or similar)

  • Background in multi-sensor fusion and calibration for robust perception under real-world conditions

  • Familiarity with teleoperation systems and the latency and reliability constraints they impose

  • Experience deploying and optimizing perception models on edge or onboard compute (quantization, TensorRT, etc.)

  • Familiarity with humanoid or legged robot platforms and the unique perception challenges they present

  • Prior work on early-stage hardware programs (prototype or pre-production robots)

Why This Role

  • Your perception stack is the robot's eyes — the software you write directly determines what our humanoids can see, understand, and safely interact with in the real world

  • Work at the boundary of hardware and AI, integrating state-of-the-art sensors and learned perception models onto real robotic systems

  • High ownership in a small, fast-moving team where your contributions shape how the next generation of humanoid robots perceive and navigate the world

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