Senior/Principal Applied Research Software Engineer

Quick Facts

• Role: Senior/Principal Applied Research Software Engineer
• Work mode: Remote, geographically flexible home office

Description

The Applied Research team turns research implementations into edge-focused capabilities that operators can use without needing ML expertise. This is an applied, product-oriented role: success means shipping timely, reliable product features around rapidly evolving models and algorithms. You will own end-to-end integrations, productionize core capabilities, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to validate solutions on real customer data.

Responsibilities

• Turn state-of-the-art research implementations into product features delivering ML capabilities at the edge.
• Scope and own initial product integrations end to end: evaluate implementations, define an incremental delivery path, productionize core capabilities, build APIs and data flows, and update the product UI.
• Build in-product integrations into a Frontline Perception System across Python model services, Golang application services, and a Vue 3 client.
• Collaborate with Research, Product, Design, Mission, Field Engineering, and external technical partners to map operational problems to solution sets based on state-of-the-art algorithms.
• Develop reliable software around imperfect and rapidly evolving models, including tests, observability, failure handling, and clear technical documentation.
• Validate solutions using real customer data.
• Design for disconnected, resource-constrained environments (latency, compute, memory, bandwidth, hardware architecture, and model packaging).
• Participate in technical design and code reviews; help teammates navigate unfamiliar parts of the stack; improve shared frameworks to speed future integrations.

Requirements

• 8+ years working in software engineering, product engineering, or production machine learning.
• Demonstrated experience taking ML/robotics/computer vision (or similar research-grade) software from prototype to production.
• Strong Python experience and the ability to work in unfamiliar parts of a full-stack system.
• Experience with Golang, TypeScript, or reactive frameworks such as Vue or React is valuable.
• Experience with ML runtimes/frameworks such as PyTorch, ONNX Runtime, or TensorRT, including containerized deployment on GPU-enabled systems.
• Experience designing and evolving APIs using gRPC, Protocol Buffers, GraphQL, or REST.
• Proven ability to work through ambiguous technical/product domains and define what to implement before diving into coding.
• Excellent engineering judgment (simple designs, readable code, thoughtful testing, and understanding beyond happy-path behavior).
• Curiosity and self-direction to go deep and return with practical recommendations and working software.
• Strong cross-functional communication and ability to incorporate feedback from engineers, product partners, domain experts, and end users.
• Eligibility to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance.

Benefits

• Remote, autonomy-driven startup culture with ownership of integrations and continuous change.