Autonomy Engineering Specialist - Operator Safety Systems

Caterpillar•Irving, TX

7d•Onsite

About The Position

Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc. When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do – but also about each other. We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here – we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it. The Operator Safety Systems Senior Developer uses their experience to provide technical contribution in the design, development, integration, and deployment of production software that helps protect operators, personnel, and equipment in heavy equipment environments. Working with a high degree of independence, this role develops robust C++ software for perception-enabled safety features, operator awareness, and related safety-system capabilities used in mining, construction, and other demanding applications. This individual serves as a hands-on technical leader within an operator safety systems team that supports projects such as Collision Mitigation, Camera/Radar/Sensor Integration, Machine Vision and Perception Pipelines, and Embedded Edge Software for Heavy Equipment. In doing so, this person would be responsible for influencing software architecture, implementation quality, system integration practices, and engineering decisions while mentoring other developers and partnering closely with systems, validation, product, and field teams.

Requirements

Advanced C++ development experience for production software in embedded, edge, robotics, perception, or safety-oriented systems
Interprets system designs, software requirements, interface definitions, and test expectations for complex safety-system features
Strong engineering practices, debugging/profiling skills. Applies structured, maintainable software design practices in systems with real-time, reliability, and field-support constraints
Demonstrates experience designing software for complex systems involving sensors, perception, edge processing, machine interfaces, and safety-oriented behavior
Describes major software architecture alternatives and considerations. Displays experience in estimating the time to develop a specific design of a proposed product. Facilitates design reviews and walkthroughs. Analyzes benefits and drawbacks of specific software designs and architecture.
Identifies and documents specific problems and resolution alternatives. Helps to analyze risks and benefits of alternative approaches and obtain decisions on resolution. Uses fact-finding techniques and diagnostic tools to identify problems
Discovers, analyzes, and resolves software or application problems. Analyzes code, logs, and current systems as part of advanced troubleshooting. Records and reports specific technical problems, solving processes and tools that have been used.
Knowledge of effective presentation tools and techniques to ensure clear understanding; ability to use summarization and simplification techniques to explain complex technical concepts in simple, clear language appropriate to the audience. Perceives lack of audience comprehension; further simplifies explanation when needed.
Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field – or commensurate industry experience.

Nice To Haves

Extensive experience as a Development Engineer supporting engineering projects on robotics, autonomous or semi-autonomous systems.
Strong experience with robotics, autonomy, or perception software, including one or more areas such as machine vision, sensor fusion, perception pipelines, positioning, planning, controls, or operator-assist features
Experience using GStreamer to build, debug, optimize, or integrate camera and video-processing pipelines
Hands-on machine vision experience, including camera calibration, image processing, object detection, tracking, perception model integration, or performance tuning on edge hardware
Experience developing software for safety-oriented systems, including requirements-driven development, hazard-aware design decisions, verification planning, and disciplined release practices
Prior experience supporting operator awareness, collision mitigation, personnel detection, proximity detection, or other safety-critical machine systems preferred
Experience with cameras and sensing technologies such as radar, LiDAR, GNSS/GPS, ultrasonic, stereo vision, thermal cameras, or other perception sensors preferred
Experience with real-time controllers, embedded Linux, edge computing, GPU-accelerated processing, or field-deployed compute platforms preferred
Experience in Construction or Mining Industries preferred

Responsibilities

Design, implement, test, and release production-quality C++ software for operator safety systems on heavy equipment
Develop and integrate software components that support operator awareness, personnel detection, collision mitigation, and safety-oriented machine responses
Build and maintain camera, sensor, and perception data pipelines for real-time or near-real-time safety applications
Lead software architecture and design trade-off discussions with a focus on reliability, maintainability, latency, diagnosability, and field supportability
Collaborate with systems engineering, validation, product, and field teams to translate safety-system needs into clear software requirements and implementation plans
Troubleshoot complex software and system issues using logs, traces, telemetry, sensor data, profiling tools, and field observations
Facilitate design reviews, code reviews, debugging sessions, and technical discussions across cross-functional engineering teams
Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to developers, systems engineers, stakeholders, and leadership
Mentor engineers and improve team execution through strong development practices, technical guidance, and example