Senior Perception Engineer

John Deere • Santa Clara, CA

3d • $109,284 - $163,920 • Onsite

About The Position

There are over 7 billion people on this planet. And by 2050, there will be 2 billion more... many moving into urban centers at an unprecedented rate. Making sure there is enough food, fiber and infrastructure for our rapidly growing world is what we're all about at John Deere. And it's why we're investing in our people and our technology like never before! Here the world's brightest minds are tackling the world's biggest challenges. If you believe one person can make the world a better place, we'll put you to work. RIGHT NOW.

John Deere is an equal opportunity employer, including disabled & veterans.

Primary Location: United States (US) - California  - Santa Clara  Function: Product Engineering (CA)Title: Senior Perception Engineer - 121330 Onsite/Remote:Onsite Position

Requirements

• 3 or more years of professional software engineering experience, including substantial work in modern C++.
• Hands‑on experience with applied machine learning for perception — training, evaluating, and deploying models using frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.
• Strong debugging skills, especially in log‑driven environments where issues span multiple processes, sensors, or system layers.
• Experience working with sensor data (camera, LiDAR, radar) and building or maintaining perception pipelines.
• Ability to work effectively across system boundaries — from onboard compute and middleware to cloud‑based data workflows.
• Demonstrated ability to deliver high‑quality, maintainable code and collaborate effectively within a multidisciplinary engineering team.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with ROS 2 (nodes, lifecycle, launch, parameters, QoS) and its build ecosystem.
• Experience deploying ML models to embedded platforms (Jetson, ARM, x86) and optimizing for latency, memory, or power constraints.
• Background in classical computer vision, sensor fusion, or tracking algorithms.
• Experience with static analysis and code quality tools (clang‑tidy, ASAN/TSAN/UBSAN).
• Experience with simulation environments, synthetic data generation, or system‑level testing frameworks.
• Domain experience in agricultural, mining, construction, or other off‑highway autonomous systems.
• Solid understanding of Linux development, build systems (CMake, Bazel, or colcon), and containerized workflows (Docker).
• Familiarity with concurrency, performance constraints, and real‑time considerations in robotics or embedded systems.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain perception capabilities across the full autonomy stack — working from onboard C++ systems and sensor interfaces up through applied ML models that interpret the environment.
• Develop and maintain key components of the perception pipeline, including data ingestion, labeling, model execution, and downstream interfaces used by planning and controls.
• Diagnose and resolve perception failures using logs and sensor data — reconstructing system behavior when real‑time debugging isn’t possible and driving issues to root cause.
• Implement and optimize C++ modules running on embedded and edge compute platforms, ensuring real‑time performance, robustness, and clean integration with the broader autonomy system.
• Train, evaluate, and deploy applied ML models for detection, segmentation, tracking, and scene understanding — focusing on production reliability rather than research novelty.
• Improve the quality and maintainability of perception codebases by refactoring legacy components, tightening interfaces, and eliminating technical debt.
• Collaborate closely with robotics, systems, and platform teams to ensure perception outputs meet system‑level requirements and integrate cleanly across boundaries.
• Contribute to team engineering culture through thoughtful code reviews, design discussions, and sharing best practices in C++, ML, and systems debugging.
• Drive clarity in ambiguous problem spaces by breaking down perception issues into actionable engineering tasks and proposing pragmatic solutions.

Benefits

• Flexible work arrangements
• Highly competitive base pay
• Savings & Retirement benefits (401K and Defined Contribution)
• Healthcare benefits with a generous company contribution in the Health Savings Account
• Adoption assistance
• Employee Assistance Programs
• Tuition assistance
• Fitness subsidies and on-site gyms at specific Deere locations
• Charitable contribution match
• Employee Purchase Plan & numerous discount programs for personal use
• Vacation and Holiday Pay

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior