Senior Software Development Engineer, Robotics Perception

Amazon is seeking exceptional talent to help develop the next generation of advanced robotics systems that will transform automation at Amazon's scale. We're building robotic systems that combine cutting-edge AI, sophisticated control systems, and advanced mechanical design to create adaptable automation solutions capable of working safely alongside humans in dynamic environments. This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of robotics and automation at an unprecedented scale, working with world-class teams pushing the boundaries of what's possible in robotic dexterous manipulation, locomotion, and human-robot interaction. This role presents an opportunity to shape the future of robotics through innovative applications of the latest software and AI tools for robots.

At Amazon we leverage advanced robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to solve complex operational challenges at an unprecedented scale. Our fleet of robots operates across hundreds of facilities worldwide, working in sophisticated coordination to fulfill our mission of customer excellence.

We are building the brains of our next-generation robots - a stack that:
- Enables deployment of robots at Amazon scale
- Enables unprecedented generalization across diverse tasks
- Seamlessly integrates with large models and optimal control techniques
- Integrates with human-safe safety solutions

As a Senior Software Development Engineer on our on-robot software team, you will lead productization across perception, localization and mapping (SLAM), navigation, and spatial memory on the robot. This software tells the robot where it is and what is around it, so planning, manipulation, and safety can act. You will partner with applied scientists to turn their research prototypes into fast, reliable production components on embedded GPUs. You will set the architecture, interfaces, and engineering standards the team builds to, and decide where models run and how they share compute. You will lead designs across science and engineering teams, and build the evaluation that shows whether a change made the robot better.

Join us in building the next generation of intelligent robotics systems that will transform the future of automation and human-robot collaboration.

Key job responsibilities
- Set the technical direction for the robot's perception, SLAM, navigation, and spatial memory software, and lead the engineers who build it
- Own how well the robot perceives and navigates in real facilities, and drive the fixes when it falls short
- Work with applied science leaders to bring research from prototypes to production
- Make tradeoffs across the stack, such as what runs on the robot versus in the cloud and how models share limited compute
- Define how perception and mobility work with planning, manipulation, and safety, and create alignment across teams
- Build the evaluation strategy that shows robot performance improvements, and use it to set priorities with science and program partners
- Raise the engineering bar through design reviews, mentoring, and hiring

Basic qualifications

- 5+ years of non-internship professional software development experience
- 5+ years of programming with at least one software programming language experience
- 5+ years of leading design or architecture (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
- Experience as a mentor, tech lead or leading an engineering team
- Bachelors or Master's degree, or 10+ years in CS, ME, EE or related field experience
- Experience designing and shipping perception, computer vision, SLAM, or navigation software for robots, autonomous vehicles, or other real-world systems

Preferred qualifications

- Master's degree or PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, with a focus on computer vision, state estimation, or machine learning
- Experience leading perception, SLAM, or navigation software for robots or autonomous vehicles deployed in production
- Experience optimizing machine learning models or computer vision pipelines for real-time inference on embedded GPUs (e.g., NVIDIA Jetson, TensorRT, ONNX Runtime, CUDA)
- Experience with 3D perception and state estimation, such as stereo depth, visual, visual-inertial, or lidar odometry, SLAM and loop closure, mapping, or localization
- Experience with navigation and autonomy stacks (e.g., ROS 2, Nav2, costmaps, global and local planning)
- Experience integrating vision-language or other foundation models into robot perception or navigation, such as open-vocabulary detection and segmentation, semantic maps, or language-guided navigation
- Experience with model compression and quantization (INT8/FP8, pruning, distillation) and GPU profiling tools such as NVIDIA Nsight Systems or Nsight Compute
- Experience with multi-camera and multi-sensor pipelines (e.g., GMSL cameras, lidar, time synchronization) and serving multiple models on shared accelerators (e.g., Triton Inference Server)
- Experience deploying models across heterogeneous accelerator platforms (GPU, NPU, DSP)
- Experience building simulation-based or hardware-in-the-loop evaluation for perception, localization, or navigation
- Experience using AI coding assistants and agents to speed up development, with sound judgment about reviewing and verifying their output
- Excellent written and verbal communication, with a track record of leading technical work across science and engineering teams

Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.

Our inclusive culture empowers Amazonians to deliver the best results for our customers. If you have a disability and need a workplace accommodation or adjustment during the application and hiring process, including support for the interview or onboarding process, please visit https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/accommodations for more information. If the country/region you’re applying in isn’t listed, please contact your Recruiting Partner.

The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage), 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.

USA, MA, N.Reading - 168,100.00 - 227,400.00 USD annually
USA, MA, Wilmington - 168,100.00 - 227,400.00 USD annually