Principal Robotics Software Engineer
CleraOn-site - San Francisco, California, United StatesPosted 2026-10-29
- This listing's locations
- On-site - San Francisco, California, United States
- Employment
- Full-time
- Workplace
- On site
- Compensation
- 235000–305000 per year
Department: Engineering
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About the Role
Join the robotics team at a defense technology company developing autonomous systems to detect and counter unmanned aerial threats. This is a senior, hands-on individual contributor role focused on production robotics software running on real hardware.
What You'll Do
- Write and own critical production C++ across the robotics stack.
- Define and maintain system-wide timing and safety contracts from perception through control.
- Take software from prototype to dependable field releases, including packaging, deployment, CI/CD, quality assurance, and hardware-in-the-loop testing.
- Mentor and grow the robotics team while continuing to contribute code directly.
- Debug hardware and field issues, including during regular range tests.
What We're Looking For
- 10 or more years of hands-on robotics software engineering experience and a record of shipping systems.
- Recent, hands-on production C++ experience on physical robotic systems.
- Experience taking robotics software from prototype to repeatable use in field, operator, fleet, or customer settings.
- System-level experience with timing, threading, latency, and reliability, as well as release processes, deployment, CI/CD, quality assurance, or hardware-in-the-loop testing.
- Broad robotics experience across sensors, perception, tracking, control, middleware, and deployment; familiarity with sensor timestamps, time synchronization, or coordinate transforms is valuable.
- Experience mentoring or growing a team while remaining an individual contributor.
- ROS or ROS2 and experience with cameras, IMUs, encoders, or gimbal systems are useful. Defense, aerospace, safety-critical software, systems languages beyond C++, sensor fusion, or an active security clearance are also valuable.
- Must meet applicable U.S. person requirements for export-controlled work.
Compensation & Benefits
Base salary: $235,000 to $305,000 annually. Visa sponsorship is not available.
Location
On-site five days per week in San Francisco, California, United States, with range days included.