Robotics Engineer

Robotics Software Engineer III – Autonomy About the Role You will develop, integrate, and test autonomy and perception subsystems for robotic platforms operating in real-world environments, specifically supporting robotic inspection systems used in nuclear power plant environments, including steam generator inspection applications. Your work will span software development, ROS 2-based system integration, perception and localization fundamentals, and practical autonomy behaviors. This role is focused on integrating, evaluating, tuning, testing, and deploying existing autonomy solutions rather than performing greenfield research or developing novel autonomy algorithms from scratch. You will collaborate with mechanical, electrical, controls, test, and field-operations personnel to bring robotic capabilities from simulation and logs to deployment on physical hardware. Strong cross‑functional communication, presentation ability, initiative, and adaptability in undefined or evolving environments will be important to success in this role. You will be expected to own moderately scoped subsystems, assess technical tradeoffs, define implementation and test plans, participate in design reviews, and contribute to the architecture of complete robotic systems. Early projects will have well‑defined scopes focused on technical execution; as you grow, you will help shape interfaces, deployment patterns, and reliability practices for future robots. The robotic platforms may include camera‑based sensing, magnetic wheel mobility, edge‑computing‑based autonomy workloads, and software used to improve detection and navigation performance in real‑world inspection environments. This is not an embedded systems or hardware design role. Responsibilities Owns moderately scoped subsystems and improves estimation, uncertainty modeling, and interface reasoning. Begins standardizing testing, logging, and reproducibility practices across projects. Contributes to architectural decisions for autonomy, data flow, configuration, and ROS 2 interfaces. Gains intuition for failure modes in autonomy stacks and mitigates them proactively. Works smoothly with mechanical, electrical, controls, test, and operations teams. Mentors interns or junior engineers through code reviews and pairing sessions. Demonstrates sound judgment in ambiguous or evolving technical environments and can move work forward without requiring every requirement or interface to be fully defined upfront. Communicates progress, risks, and technical decisions clearly to both technical and cross‑functional stakeholders. Long‑Term Development Helps shape autonomy architecture, ROS 2 interface patterns, configuration conventions, and system‑level integration boundaries. Supports designing modular perception, localization, and planning components that reduce coupling across teams. Develops intuition for hardware variability, environment inconsistencies, and runtime edge cases; introduces safeguards and diagnostics before issues appear in field tests. Contributes to multi‑stage autonomy workflows and cross‑disciplinary integration patterns. Gradually develops technical influence across adjacent teams, including perception, controls, and platform engineering. Helps mature deployment patterns for robotic inspection systems used in secure, regulated, or operationally constrained nuclear environments. Builds practical system‑level judgment around how autonomy software performs on real hardware during inspection workflows, not only in simulation or controlled lab environments. Qualifications Bachelor’s degree in Robotics, Mechatronics, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field; advanced degrees welcome but not required. Approximately 5+ years of relevant robotics software engineering experience, specifically independent development with ROS 2, from bring‑up to development and debugging/testing. Required Skills Proficiency in modern C++ or Python, and productive experience in the other. Hands‑on experience developing and deploying robotics software on Windows and Linux, using Git, CMake, package management, logging, profiling, and CI. Practical experience integrating, testing, debugging, and tuning robotics or autonomy systems in real‑world environments, especially where requirements, operating conditions, or deployment constraints may evolve over time. Ability to communicate technical tradeoffs clearly to cross‑functional engineering, test, and operations stakeholders, including through design reviews, technical discussions, and presentations. Preferred Skills Independently debug, test, and review ROS 2‑based robotics systems, including hardware‑in‑the‑loop and simulation environments. Basic knowledge of CAD for mechanical design, as applicable for use to develop virtual models of robots and their working environments, such as URDF, OpenUSD, or SDF. Build, configure, and integrate ROS 2 nodes for sensor fusion, perception, and subsystem deployment. Evaluate, configure, and tune existing autonomy, perception, localization, and navigation components rather than needing to invent novel algorithms from first principles. Apply practical localization and mapping concepts, including visual‑inertial odometry and SLAM, while deep research‑level SLAM or publication‑level expertise is not required. Develop and tune trajectory planning solutions for mobile robots, leveraging cost maps, planners, and behavior trees. Diagnose and resolve issues related to sensor integration, timing, frame inconsistencies, and system failures. Work with camera‑based sensing, inspection data, robot mobility constraints, and deployment scenarios where environmental conditions may be variable or partially undefined. Support edge‑computing deployment patterns for robotics software. This should not be interpreted as embedded driver development, FPGA work, or low‑level hardware design. #J-18808-Ljbffr Insight Global