Perception Engineer, Robot Safety

Description

The company builds robots for work that is still done by hand. Few factories and warehouses in the US have a single robot, and robots are not yet common in homes or businesses.

The company is a robotics research and deployment firm. It builds general-purpose robot hardware and the AI that runs it. Sonny is a semi-humanoid robot with dexterity close to a human's. Cassie handles heavy lifting of boxes, pallets, and bulk goods for customers ranging from family-owned manufacturers to very large brands.

Robots are built in volume and act as one network, so each robot's experience feeds the training of the whole fleet.

The company started at MIT and is based in Watertown, MA. The team designs and makes its own hardware, trains its own models, works with customers of every size, and maintains the fleet across the United States. The team has about 160 people, including researchers, engineers, technicians, operators, and sales staff.

Responsibilities

• Build detection, tracking, and monitoring systems that use lidar and cameras and run on robots in production, so people working near robots stay safe.
• Own the safety-critical software from sensor input to a robot stopping, including its tests, failure modes, and what it does when an upstream component fails.
• Design and review the logic that decides whether a robot can move, and review codebase changes that affect that decision.
• Find weaknesses using replayed field data, built test scenarios, and hardware faults, then fix them.
• Work with whichever product team is building something that affects safety and help build it.
• Help set Tutor's approach to keeping robots safe and deployable as the fleet and its applications grow, including the evidence given to customers.
• The formal side of safety work, including risk assessments and the standards customers ask about, is part of the role. The company will teach it. The hiring focus is engineering.

Requirements

• Experience shipping perception or monitoring software on robots or vehicles, such as lidar or camera pipelines, detection, tracking, or sensor fusion, running on production hardware.
• Experience owning code where a bug could injure someone, and an understanding of how that affects design, testing, and review.
• Strong software engineering in Python, C++, or similar, including real-time constraints and code others can verify.
• Working knowledge of controls: stopping distances, latency budgets, and how a perception result becomes a motion command.
• A habit of fixing what you find: you propose the fix and usually build it yourself.
• Familiarity with safety standards for robots or machinery, such as ISO 10218, ISO 13849, or ANSI/RIA R15.06.
• Experience with safety-rated sensors or with validating a detector for safety use.
• Experience in warehouses, manufacturing, or other settings where robots and people share space.
• Experience with simulation and replay tools for testing perception at scale.

Conditions

The company is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes applicants from all backgrounds.

Benefits

• Health insurance fully paid by the employer, with no premium to pay.
• A managed 401(k) retirement plan.
• Full-time salaried employees get unlimited PTO and all federal holidays off.
• Hourly employees get 16+ days of accrued paid time off and 1.5x pay on federal holidays.
• Regular in-office meals and team social events throughout the year.
• The company plans to expand benefits as it grows, and is investing in ways to support staff at work and beyond.