Defining motion for autonomous systems. Backed by a16z.
About the role
Research engineers take prototype code and make it production-grade. Sample projects include: taking a research perception pipeline (pose estimation, SLAM, calibration) and hardening it for reliable, real-time execution on embedded platforms
What they're looking for
- 3+ years of industry experience in software engineering with a focus on systems, performance, or production ML
- strong C++ proficiency, including modern C++ (C++17/20), memory management, and performance-conscious coding patterns
- CUDA programming experience: ability to write, profile, and debug GPU kernels
- experience with CPU performance optimization: profiling, cache behavior, SIMD, latency reduction
- proficiency with Python and familiarity with ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow) at the level needed to read and modify research code
- comfort with Linux systems, including build systems, debugging tools, and containerization
More about this role
At XDOF, we’re at an inflection point. Frontier labs are racing to build general-purpose robots, and high-quality training data is the bottleneck. We’re building the foundation behind the foundation models – the data collection systems, operational capability, exabyte-scale data warehouse, and software toolchain – to help our partners drive the field forward.
Our research teams move fast and produce breakthrough work, but research code and production code are different things. We’re looking for a Research Engineer to bridge that gap: someone who can read a research prototype, understand it deeply, and turn it into something that runs reliably at scale on real hardware. You can expect to float across teams to wherever the highest-priority needs are, across perception, ML, and data infrastructure.
Research engineers take prototype code and make it production-grade. Sample projects include:
taking a research perception pipeline (pose estimation, SLAM, calibration) and hardening it for reliable, real-time execution on embedded platforms
profiling and optimizing performance-critical code at the CPU, memory, and GPU level using tools like perf, NSight, and custom microbenchmarks
writing...
Browse similar: AI jobs · AI startup jobs · Startup jobs · San Francisco Bay Area