Sr. Staff Engineer / Principal Robotics SLAM and Positioning Lead

Qualcomm•San Diego, CA

2d•$198,600 - $297,800•Onsite

About The Position

Qualcomm’s Advanced Robotics team is building a production-grade, AI-first robotics software platform that scales from AMRs and industrial robots to next-generation humanoids. By pairing heterogeneous compute (CPU/GPU/DSP/NPU) with robust middleware, safety architecture, and cloud integration, we enable customers to deploy intelligent, reliable, and scalable robotic systems across industries. Localization, mapping, and positioning are foundational to this vision—serving as the backbone for autonomy, navigation, manipulation, fleet operations, and system safety.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 6+ years of Systems Engineering or related work experience.
OR Master's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 5+ years of Systems Engineering or related work experience.
OR PhD in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 4+ years of Systems Engineering or related work experience.
Works in the lab, can use hazardous chemicals (e.g., glue, machinery).

Nice To Haves

8+ years of experience developing SLAM, localization, or state estimation systems for real-world robotic or autonomous platforms.
Strong proficiency in C++ with production-grade software engineering practices.
Deep understanding of multi-sensor fusion, calibration, and probabilistic estimation.
Experience delivering systems that run continuously on real robots, not just in research prototypes.
Experience with service-oriented or middleware-centric robotics architectures (e.g., ROS2/DDS-based systems).
Familiarity with map lifecycle management, fleet-scale localization, or cloud-assisted robotics workflows.
Background in diagnostics, observability, or health monitoring for safety-critical systems.
Experience optimizing robotics workloads on embedded or heterogeneous compute platforms.
Track record of technical leadership influencing architecture across multiple teams.

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end architecture for Qualcomm’s SLAM and positioning services, defining clear service boundaries, APIs, data contracts, and performance envelopes.
Drive the transition from algorithm prototypes to robust, production-grade services suitable for long-running robotic deployments.
Establish design principles for determinism, observability, recoverability, and scalability across on-device and fleet deployments.
Lead the design and implementation of the following foundational services: Calibration Service, State Estimation / Fusion Service, Localization Service, SLAM & Map Management Service, Re-localization & Recovery Service, Diagnostics & Health Monitoring.
Partner with robotics middleware, controls, perception, and hardware teams to ensure seamless integration with navigation, planning, and manipulation stacks.
Collaborate with simulation and validation teams to define regression suites, KPIs, and benchmarking methodologies.
Influence product roadmaps by translating customer requirements and field learnings into architectural decisions.
Establish SLAM KPIs for accuracy, robustness, latency, and recovery behavior across platforms.
Drive CI/CD practices, test automation, and release readiness criteria for localization services.
Optimize algorithms and pipelines for Qualcomm SoCs using heterogeneous compute efficiently.