Senior Principal Systems Engineer

Role Overview:

The Senior Principal Systems Engineer owns the end-to-end systems design for our humanoid robot applications, spanning software, AI, and hardware integration. You will bridge the gap between cutting-edge AI, robotic operating systems, and physical hardware. In this role, you will drive critical technical decisions, manage physical system constraints, and guide robotics engineers and AI/ML scientists while staying hands-on in a lean, startup-style setup.

Your Impact:

• Own the end-to-end system design for humanoid robot applications.
• Define reusable software platforms spanning robotics, AI, voice, cloud, and edge systems.
• Lead technical decisions involving robotics frameworks, operating systems, SDKs, AI infrastructure, and deployment architectures.
• Guide proof-of-concepts into production-ready customer deployments.
• Collaborate with robotics OEMs, technology partners, and cross-functional engineering teams.

Key Responsibilities:

• System Architecture: Design scalable, modular software architectures for humanoid robot applications.
• Tech Stack Selection: Evaluate and select robotic software frameworks and developer SDKs.
• Hardware-Software Co-design: Collaborate closely with mechanical and electrical teams to optimize system latency, compute allocation, thermal envelopes, battery utilization, and power budgets.
• Platform Reuse: Drive a platform strategy enabling modular reuse of application logic across different physical robot forms.
• AI & Agentic Systems: Define how foundation models, agentic orchestration frameworks, memory systems, multimodal AI, and reasoning engines integrate into robot applications.
• Production Readiness: Ensure deployed solutions meet reliability, observability, maintainability, security, and operational requirements.
• Project Leadership: Lead the project end to end in a lean, fast-moving startup environment, working closely with robotics engineers and AI/ML scientists.

Required Skills & Experience:

Mandatory (Must Have):

• Robotics Domains: Understanding of ROS 2, Navigation & Localization (SLAM, Nav2), Manipulation & Motion Planning (MoveIt2), Perception Pipelines, Sensor Fusion, Robot Middleware, DDS communication, and distributed robotics architectures.
• Systems Engineering: Proven experience designing cyber-physical systems operating under compute limitations, thermal constraints, battery optimization, network intermittency, and fail-safe operational requirements.
• Programming: Knowledge of advanced C++ (17/20) and expertise in Python architectural design.
• Operating Systems: Mastery of Linux (Ubuntu/Debian), containerized deployments, and embedded computing platforms.
• Experience: 8+ years in robotics, autonomous systems, industrial automation, physical AI, or complex cyber-physical environments.

Good to Have (Highly Valued Plus):

• Real-Time Linux: PREEMPT_RT and deterministic kernel environments.
• Microcontroller RTOS: Zephyr RTOS, FreeRTOS or low-level embedded control platforms.
• Developer SDKs & Simulation: NVIDIA Isaac SDK, Isaac Sim, Omniverse, Gazebo, Webots, Intel RealSense.
• Safety & Compliance: ISO 13849, IEC 61508, IEC 62443 and Human-Robot Interaction safety requirements.
• AI & Foundation Models: Experience integrating LLMs, VLMs, agentic workflows, multimodal reasoning and edge AI inference platforms.
• Leadership: Experience leading technical projects or small cross-functional teams in startup, R&D, robotics, or fast-paced product development environments.

Why Join the Team:

• Help define how Conversational AI powers Physical AI and humanoid robotics.
• Influence product direction, platform strategy, and customer deployments.
• Work across Robotics, Agentic AI, Conversational AI, Edge AI, and Cloud Platforms.
• Operate with startup agility backed by Cerence technology and brand.

Education & Qualifications:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related discipline.

What We Offer:

We offer a generous compensation and benefits package (in addition to the base salary), including:

• Salary range $192,500.00 - $290,000.00 USD. It is not typical for offers to be made at or near the top of the range. The actual salary will be determined based on experience and other job-related factors.
• Annual bonus opportunity
• Insurance coverage (medical, dental, vision, life, and disability)
• Paid time off
• Paid holidays
• Company contribution to the 401(k) plan
• Equity awards for certain positions and levels

All compensation and benefits are subject to the terms and conditions of the underlying plans or programs, as applicable, and may be amended, terminated, or replaced from time to time.