Lead Perception Engineer

🚗 Woven by Toyota: Enabling Toyota's Mobility Transformation 🚗

Woven by Toyota is at the forefront of Toyota's century-defining transformation into a mobility company. Driven by a legacy of innovation for the benefit of others, our mission is to redefine mobility through human-centric innovation, expanding its meaning and societal impact.

Our work is structured around four key pillars:

• AD/ADAS: Autonomous driving and advanced driver-assist technologies.
• Arene: Our software development platform for software-defined vehicles.
• Woven City: A dedicated testbed for mobility innovation.
• Cloud & AI: The digital infrastructure powering our collaborative foundation.

Business-critical functions empower these teams to execute their missions, all working towards a singular, ambitious goal: a world with zero accidents and enhanced well-being for all.

🌟 TEAM 🌟

At Woven by Toyota, we tackle some of the most complex challenges in autonomy. This includes 3D geometric computer vision, perception, prediction, motion planning, and the safe deployment of ML systems in real vehicles. Our AD/ADAS organization is dedicated to developing production-grade autonomy and active safety technologies that perform reliably in intricate, unpredictable real-world environments and are deployed at a global scale.

You will collaborate daily with ML researchers, software engineers, robotics engineers, and hardware teams. Together, you will design, build, and deploy perception and world-understanding systems that directly shape how vehicles perceive, reason about, and interact with their surroundings.

🎯 WHO ARE WE LOOKING FOR? 🎯

We are seeking a Lead Engineer to report to the Global Head of World Understanding. This role will be instrumental in driving the multi-year roadmap, architecture, metrics, and technical strategy for software components that contribute to understanding the vehicle's environment.

We are looking for a system thinker with deep technical expertise in machine learning approaches for complex systems. This engineer will accelerate the adoption of data-driven and deep learning methodologies, with a focus on ML system design and verification, supervised/unsupervised learning, multi-modality, multi-task training, and temporal/sequential modeling. The role emphasizes faster and more cost-efficient model iteration, data-driven validation strategies, and unlocking new safety and performance capabilities through advanced ML.

This position also requires strong communication skills, an aptitude for mentoring tech leads, and the ability to influence and collaborate with diverse stakeholders, including TMC. You will be key in identifying deep technical challenges, developing innovative solutions, and executing on the delivery of our autonomy mission.

✅ RESPONSIBILITIES ✅

• Driving the technical vision and multi-year strategy for World Understanding software, encompassing perception, mapping, fusion, and on-board/off-board systems.
• Leading project execution, defining efficient engineering processes, and proactively mitigating risks.
• Collaborating with cross-functional teams such as Data, Behavior (Planner/Controller/HMI), Developer Ecosystem, and Product Delivery.
• Influencing technical decisions across the organization to foster innovation, ensure seamless system integration, and improve overall engineering efficiency.
• Developing state-of-the-art models to deliver desired driving environments across various sensor configurations.
• Increasing the speed of component- and system-level model iteration while maintaining cost efficiency.
• Incorporating data-driven approaches to enhance system performance and unlock new safety capabilities.
• Maintaining the functional architecture design and leading technical design reviews.
• Driving organizational metrics towards performance, safety, and quality goals.
• Maintaining an external presence for the department through papers, patents, and presentations.
• Assessing and mitigating risks to the technical program.
• Partnering with other Lead Engineers in AD/ADAS to resolve high-impact cross-functional issues.
• Mentoring and supporting engineers, fostering growth through code reviews, knowledge sharing, and collaboration with cross-functional teams to align technical solutions with business goals.
• Designing reusable software components as part of an integrated system.
• Understanding and implementing software practices that produce maintainable code, including simulation, continuous integration, code review, HIL testing, and in-vehicle testing.
• Building component and system-level validation strategies to resolve complex component interactions, increase performance, and evaluate design trade-offs related to data-driven practices.

🎓 MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS 🎓

• 10+ years of professional experience in machine learning applications or applied science.
• MS or PhD in Machine Learning, Mechanical, Electrical, Computer, Aerospace Engineering, or a similar field.
• Deep expertise in ML algorithms, frameworks, data-driven methods, supervised/unsupervised learning, multi-modality, multi-task training, and temporal/sequential modeling, with a proven ability to deploy ML models at scale.
• Strong R&D potential in algorithm design, data-driven approaches to safety, and large-scale, complex systems architecture, along with requirements-driven development.
• Experience utilizing deep learning frameworks to enhance development speed and ease.
• Experience with temporal data and/or sequential modeling.
• Experience with code quality and systems safety processes for production code delivery, particularly concerning data-driven methodologies and model validation.
• A strong, practical understanding of real-time system development, performance issues, testing modalities, and trade-offs.
• Proficiency in writing code in C++ and Python.
• Ability to lead in a globally distributed team.
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and principled professional conduct.

✨ NICE TO HAVES ✨

• Published research at top-tier conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, CVPR, and similar).
• Proven track record of deploying ML models at scale in self-driving or related fields.
• Experience with computer vision (e.g., multi-view geometry, camera calibration, depth estimation, neural radiance fields, Gaussian splatting, simultaneous localization and mapping).
• Experience with ML system design for planners (e.g., including supervised/unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, diffusion policy).
• Experience with robot motion planning (e.g., trajectory optimization, sampling-based planning, model predictive control).
• Japanese language skills.

💰 Compensation & Benefits 💰

For positions based in Palo Alto, CA, the base pay ranges from $189,000 to$310,500 annually.

Your base salary is one component of your total compensation. We offer a base salary, short-term and long-term incentives, and a comprehensive benefits package. The total compensation offered will depend on the individual's skills, experience, qualifications, location, and level.

🎁 WHAT WE OFFER 🎁

We are committed to fostering a modern work environment that supports our employees and their loved ones. We provide a range of excellent programs designed to help you do your most meaningful work and shape the future of mobility.

• Excellent health, wellness, dental, and vision coverage.
• A rewarding 401k program.
• Flexible vacation policy.
• Family planning and care benefits.

🤝 Our Commitment 🤝

• We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity.
• All information received will be used solely for the hiring and onboarding process. Please refer to our privacy notice for more details.