Software Engineer, Location & Motion (Inertial Navigation / GNSS)

Rivet Industries•Washington, DC

1d•$225,000 - $275,000

About The Position

We’re looking for an experienced engineer to own the navigation and positioning stack for Rivet’s head-worn and body-worn systems. You will be responsible for turning inertial and GNSS sensor data into a robust, continuous estimate of position and orientation across challenging real-world environments. This includes sensor calibration and characterization, inertial navigation, GNSS integration, and the estimation algorithms that bring these inputs together. You will work closely with our perception team to define how navigation and visual tracking complement one another and provide a stable experience to downstream systems. This is a highly hands-on role spanning algorithms, embedded software, hardware integration, laboratory testing, and field validation.

Requirements

BS + 8 years, MS + 5 years, or PhD + 3 years of experience in navigation, aerospace/GNC, robotics, geomatics, or a closely related field.
Demonstrated experience owning and shipping a production navigation solution that provides position and attitude estimates.
Strong hands-on experience with inertial sensing, magnetometer calibration, heading estimation, GNSS, and sensor fusion.
Deep understanding of strapdown inertial navigation, error-state estimation, Kalman filtering and/or factor-graph methods, observability, and uncertainty modeling.
Proficiency in C++ and Python, with experience developing production software for embedded or resource-constrained systems.
Strong understanding of coordinate frames and attitude representations, including ECEF, ENU/NED, body and sensor frames, quaternions, and alignment concepts.
Experience integrating sensors at the hardware and system level, including sensor selection, placement, calibration, timing/synchronization, and embedded interfaces.
Comfortable working hands-on in the lab and field, designing experiments, collecting and analyzing sensor data, and validating navigation performance against ground truth.

Nice To Haves

Experience with head- or body-worn navigation, XR/AR/VR systems, pedestrian inertial navigation, defense or resilient PNT applications, production sensor subsystems, or manufacturing calibration and test.
Ability to obtain a U.S. security clearance is also a plus.

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end 9-axis inertial sensing system, including accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer calibration, synchronization, coordinate frames, and attitude estimation.
Develop robust heading and inertial navigation solutions that account for sensor errors, environmental disturbances, temperature variation, and platform effects.
Own GNSS integration and performance, including receiver configuration, raw measurement analysis, signal quality characterization, and resilience to degraded or unreliable positioning environments.
Design and maintain the navigation fusion estimator, combining inertial, GNSS, and other available measurements into a continuous position, velocity, and attitude solution with well-characterized uncertainty.
Develop calibration and characterization methods for production and field use, including sensor characterization, per-unit calibration, and automated validation.
Partner with hardware, firmware, mechanical, and manufacturing teams on sensor selection, placement, mechanical integration, power and thermal constraints, and production test requirements.
Define interfaces between the navigation and perception systems, including transitions between absolute navigation and relative visual tracking.
Build the testing and validation infrastructure needed to measure navigation performance, replay real-world data, diagnose failures, and prevent regressions across releases.