Senior Autonomy Engineer

Caterpillar•Mossville, IL

6d•Onsite

About The Position

Caterpillar Inc. is seeking a Senior Autonomy Engineer to develop high-quality remote-control and autonomy features for complex systems. The role focuses on machine safety, operator productivity, and customer value, and includes designing, developing, validating, and integrating Remote Control Vision Systems across multiple machine models. The engineer will deliver systems to program milestones and track delivery and quality measures, including features delivered, issues per release, customer issues, and schedule variance. The position develops and troubleshoots remote-control and autonomy software for remotely operated and autonomous machines, with emphasis on vision pipelines, latency, stability, and quality. It owns onboard system design and integration with machine systems, including remote-control vision and control subsystems and autonomy Planning, Perception, and Positioning subsystems. The engineer applies computer-vision and real-time software expertise to production-quality vision software, evaluates and deploys algorithms, and works with architects, strategists, and hardware teams to ensure robust, maintainable, compatible, and portable implementations. The role extends existing codebases while preserving backward compatibility, uses internal automation and vision frameworks, and drives software quality through unit, SIL, HIL, simulation, substitute-machine, and actual-machine testing. It establishes vision-performance acceptance criteria and analyzes logs, telemetry, and other data to diagnose customer and test-site issues and improve system performance across machine models. Domestic and international travel of 5–10% is required. The role is onsite five days a week; telecommuting is not allowed.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree or foreign equivalent in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.
At least 5 years of experience in Electrical Engineering, Information Technology, or a related occupation.
Employment experience writing C and C++ software.
Employment experience developing software requirements.
Employment experience with machine validation.
Employment experience with remote-control and autonomy systems and software for off-road machines.
Employment experience with RTOS- and Linux-based embedded software development.
Employment experience with vision-system design and development.
Employment experience with camera firmware configuration and troubleshooting.

Responsibilities

Develop high-quality remote-control and autonomy features for complex systems, prioritizing machine safety, operator productivity, and customer value.
Design, develop, validate, and integrate Remote Control Vision Systems across multiple machine models.
Deliver quality systems on time to meet NPI program milestones and agreed milestone features.
Track and improve delivery and quality metrics, including features delivered per milestone, issues per release, direct customer issues, and timeline variance.
Develop, improve, and troubleshoot remote-control and autonomy software for remotely operated and autonomous machines, emphasizing vision pipelines, latency, stability, and quality.
Own onboard system design and integration with existing machine systems, including remote-control vision and control subsystems and autonomy Planning, Perception, and Positioning subsystems.
Develop remote-control vision software for video capture, encoding and decoding, transport, synchronization, overlays, and teleoperation UI/UX hooks.
Work with Autonomy and Vision System Architects and Strategists to translate requirements into development work and evaluate and deploy internal and external algorithms.
Implement validated algorithms in production-quality software, emphasizing robustness, maintainability, and portability across machine models.
Collaborate with Component Hardware teams to select and understand autonomy and vision hardware and ensure compatibility and performance across machine platforms.
Use internal automation and vision frameworks and libraries, and promote consistency and reuse in alignment with Architects and Strategists.
Maintain and extend existing codebases, deliver updates and improvements, and preserve backward compatibility and stable integrations.
Perform new application development and modifications to existing codebases.
Drive quality through unit testing and integration with SIL, HIL, simulation, substitute-machine, and actual-machine testing.
Establish vision-performance acceptance criteria, including FPS, bitrate, end-to-end latency, jitter, and recoverability.
Analyze logs, telemetry, and other data to troubleshoot complex customer and test-site issues and improve vision-system and autonomy performance across machine models.
Travel domestically and internationally 5–10% of the time.
Work onsite five days a week.