Staff Autonomy Software Engineer, Localization

Kodiak Robotics, Inc. was founded in 2018 and has become a leader in autonomous ground transportation committed to a safer and more efficient future for all. The company has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) powered technology stack purpose-built for commercial trucking and the public sector. The company delivers freight daily for its customers across the southern United States using its autonomous technology. In 2024, Kodiak became the first known company to publicly announce delivering a driverless semi-truck to a customer. Kodiak is also leveraging its commercial self-driving software to develop, test and deploy autonomous capabilities for the U.S. Department of Defense.

We are looking for a Staff Engineer on our Calibration, Localization and Mapping (CLAM) team — a technical leader with deep expertise in state estimation, inertial navigation, and sensed odometry who can set technical direction across the team and organization.

• Set the technical strategy and architecture for our onboard navigation and pose estimation systems.

• Lead the design and development of advanced sensor fusion and pose estimation approaches across IMU, camera, and lidar sensors, anticipating failure modes before they arise in the field.

• Drive the direction of visual and lidar odometry algorithms, including evaluating build-vs-adopt tradeoffs for new techniques.

• Define and evangelize navigation metrics and evaluation methodology used across the org to assess algorithm and system performance.

• Serve as a technical escalation point for complex, ambiguous, or cross-cutting localization problems.

• Evaluate sensor performance and optimize sensor selection.

• Verify correct sensor calibrations, settings, and uncertainty characterizations.

• Strong technical background. BS, MS or PhD with academic or industry experience in building navigation, localization, and odometry systems.

• Expert in C++ and strong problem-solving skills.

• Strong software engineering skills and experience building high-reliability deployed applications . You write well-designed, highly maintainable code. Code is your craft.

• Deep experience transforming raw sensor data from GNSS, IMU, wheel speed, etc. into 6-DOF pose using Kalman Filtering, factor graphs, or comparable state estimation techniques — and judgment on when each approach is appropriate.

• Experience with computer vision, visual odometry, and/or odometry from point clouds

• A history of mentoring engineers and elevating the technical practices of a team.

• A team player. You take ownership and work with the