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Salary: USD 200,000 - 250,000 / annual
AIM Intelligent Machines builds autonomy systems for heavy equipment, turning earthmoving machinery into intelligent robots. You will own the end-to-end sensor system architecture for the autonomy platform, from modality and sensor selection through placement, integration, validation, and production deployment.
Key responsibilities include:
**Sensor System Architecture**: Own the complete sensor architecture including modality selection, sensor selection, placement, and integration. Conduct trade studies on coverage, occlusion, performance, cost, and reliability. Make final decisions on sensor-suite trade-offs that shape the multi-year product roadmap. Translate product, business, customer, and autonomy requirements into concrete sensor and subsystem specifications. Partner with embedded, software, and perception teams to select compute platforms.
**Validation & Characterization**: Design comprehensive test campaigns and define acceptance criteria for sensors and the full sensing system. Build calibration and characterization processes that work on real machines in field conditions. Root-cause failures across the hardware-software boundary.
**Prototype to Deployment**: Take sensor suites from early prototypes through deployment on heavy equipment at real job sites. Design for ruggedness, retrofit onto existing machines, and operation in degraded conditions (dust, weather, vibration). Work with suppliers to source, qualify, and support sensors and components.
**Technical Leadership**: Set technical direction across hardware, perception, and vehicle teams. Define sensing standards that guide long-term company direction. Build and develop the sensor systems engineering team from the ground up.
In your first 90 days, you will translate product and autonomy requirements into engineering designs for a new hardware architecture (including compute and sensing component choices) against aggressive cost targets, build a first prototype and mount it on a machine at the proving grounds, and develop the verification and validation plan.
**Requirements**:
- Principal-level experience owning sensor systems for autonomous vehicles or robots, including setting technical direction across teams and defining standards that shape long-term product direction
- Expertise in sensor-suite architecture, requirements definition, and trade studies (sensor selection, placement, coverage and occlusion analysis)
- Hands-on experience with cameras and LiDAR
- Demonstrated capability in sensor validation, calibration, and characterization (test campaign design, acceptance criteria definition, hardware-software failure root-causing)
- Track record of taking a sensor suite from prototype into fielded deployment on real vehicles or robots (not lab/simulation only)
- Experience selecting compute platforms in partnership with embedded, software, and perception teams
**Preferred qualifications**:
- Experience with radar or other optical sensor modalities
- Expertise in sensor cleaning systems for degraded conditions
- Leadership of data-collection test campaigns with prototype vehicles in new operating domains
- Supplier management for sensors and related components
- Experience building and scaling a sensor or hardware team
