Principal Robotics Engineer

Career Area:
Technology, Digital and Data

Job Description:

Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc.

When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do – but also about each other. We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here – we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it.

Help Build the Future of Caterpillar

At Caterpillar, technology always has a purpose, which is to solve our customers’ toughest challenges. Through Cat Technology, we are solving problems by building the intelligence layer that connects machines, data, and people to make jobsites safer, more productive, and more sustainable. By combining deep domain expertise in physical systems with software, connectivity, autonomy, and AI, we deliver solutions that work in the real world—on real jobsites, at global scale.

You’ll build and deploy against one of the most unique data foundations—over 1.6 million connected assets generating real-world data daily. These data and platform capabilities are enabling the development of AI models, edge computing architectures, and software systems that scale across fleets, products, and industries. The result will be a new generation of machines that continuously learn, improve, and deliver performance at scale.

Be Part of What’s Next in Autonomous Construction Sites

Construction autonomy is one of the most complex challenges in applied AI, and at Caterpillar, advancements in physical AI, simulation, sensing, and edge computing are turning things that once felt impossible—intelligent machines operating in dynamic jobsites—into reality.

Our connected ecosystem brings together massive volumes of high-quality data to create a foundation where engineers like you can build and deploy against.

If this work motivates you, we invite you to join our team. In these roles, you’ll work at the intersection of the physical and digital worlds. You’ll help design and deliver intelligent systems that enable machines to perceive their environment, make informed decisions, and support safer, more productive operations.

Apply today to build the new era of construction autonomy at Caterpillar.

Job Summary

As a Lead Robotics Engineer, you will help define, develop, and bring to production the technologies that enable autonomous and semi-autonomous machines to perceive, understand, plan, and safely interact with the world around them. This is a highly hands-on technical leadership role spanning robotics, autonomy, perception, machine learning, and real-world machine integration. You will take complex and often ambiguous customer and machine problems, translate them into well-defined technical problems, evaluate classical robotics and modern learning-based approaches, rapidly prototype solutions, and lead those solutions through integration, validation, and production deployment. You will provide technical leadership across robotics systems including perception, sensor fusion, localization and mapping, planning, controls, machine integration, simulation, and intelligent autonomous behaviors. You will work closely with senior technology leaders and engineers across multiple disciplines to define system architectures, establish technical direction, and influence current and future Caterpillar robotics technologies. As a technical leader, you will lead design reviews, mentor engineers, establish engineering best practices, and help teams make sound architectural and technical trade-offs. You are expected to remain deeply engaged in implementation, integration, debugging, and testing on real machines.

What You Will Have

- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related technical field.
- 6+ years of industry experience developing robotics, autonomous systems, perception, machine learning, or related technologies.
- Demonstrated experience taking complex robotics or autonomy capabilities from concept and prototype through system integration and real-world deployment.
- Deep technical expertise in one or more areas of robotics, such as perception, sensor fusion, localization and mapping, planning, controls, machine learning, or autonomous systems.
- Broad understanding of robotics system architecture and the interactions between perception, planning, controls, compute, sensors, and machine interfaces.
- Experience evaluating problems and determining when classical robotics, optimization, machine learning, or hybrid approaches are most appropriate.
- Strong proficiency in C++ and Python, with excellent software engineering, debugging, profiling, and system-level troubleshooting skills.
- Experience developing real-time or resource-constrained robotics software.
- Experience with sensors commonly used in robotic systems, including cameras, LiDAR, radar, GNSS, and IMUs.
- Experience developing and integrating real-time sensor fusion systems.
- Experience with robotics frameworks and middleware such as ROS or ROS 2.
- Experience with GPU-accelerated or embedded computing platforms.
- Strong foundation in 3D geometry, linear algebra, probability, estimation, and robotics fundamentals.
- Experience defining metrics, test methodologies, and validation approaches for complex algorithms and robotic systems.
- Ability to survey technical literature, evaluate emerging technologies, and translate promising research into robust production implementations.
- Demonstrated ability to provide technical leadership, lead design discussions, and mentor other engineers.

Top Candidates Will Also Have

- Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related technical field.
- Experience with NVIDIA robotics and embedded computing platforms, including Jetson, CUDA, TensorRT, ONNX, or related acceleration technologies.
- Production experience with autonomous vehicles, mobile robots, industrial robotics, construction equipment, mining equipment, or other large robotic machines.
- Experience with modern learning-based robotics approaches, including transformer-based perception, vision-language models, vision-language-action models, imitation learning, or robotics foundation models.
- Experience developing datasets, training pipelines, evaluation methodologies, and closed-loop validation for learned robotics systems.
- Experience with simulation, synthetic data, hardware-in-the-loop testing, or sim-to-real development.
- Experience architecting complex robotics systems across perception, planning, controls, compute, sensors, and machine interfaces.
- Experience establishing technical direction and leading multidisciplinary engineering teams through delivery of complex robotic systems.
- Experience deploying, diagnosing, and supporting robotic systems in real-world customer or field environments.
- Experience with safety-critical or high-reliability autonomous systems.
- Off-highway machine application knowledge or experience.
- Strong understanding of production software architecture, portability, performance optimization, and maintainability.
- Publications, patents, or demonstrated technical contributions in robotics, autonomous systems, computer vision, or machine learning are a plus.

Additional Information

- The location for this position is San Francisco, CA.
- Domestic relocation assistance is available for this position.
- This position may require up to 10% travel.
- Sponsorship is NOT available for this position.

Summary Pay Range:

$162,540.00 - $264,120.00