Senior Perception Engineer

Job Description

Job Description

About Our Team

Chef Robotics is on a mission to accelerate the advent of intelligent machines in the physical world. As the rise of LLMs like ChatGPT has shown, AI has the potential to drive immense change. However, we believe AI’s biggest impact will be in the physical world, given industries like manufacturing, food, and transportation represent 90% of global GDP. We're starting with food, with a goal to put an intelligent robot in every commercial kitchen in the world. We have signed multiple multi-year contracts with various large food companies and we are growing fast. We're backed by investors like Kleiner Perkins, Construct, Bloomberg BETA and Promus Ventures. We have a great team, where you will be surrounded by talented engineers and tech leaders from companies like Cruise, Zoox, Google, Verb Surgical, Tesla, Nuro, Vicarious, Amazon Robotics, Strateos, Built Robotics, Facebook, Plenty, Yelp, and Microsoft.

About the Role

We are looking for a hands-on Perception Engineer who thrives in high-ownership environments and has shipped production-grade perception systems into the real world. You will lead efforts to improve how our robots perceive and interact with dynamic environments, across a wide range of food types, containers, and customer settings.

You’ve likely built models from scratch, deployed them at scale, and understand that perception is more than just models—it’s about robust systems. You have an intuition for why things break, a deep sense of data-centric debugging, and a vision for what modern perception infrastructure should look like.

This role is ideal for someone who wants to own the full stack : from selecting and integrating new sensor hardware to designing end-to-end data and ML pipelines to tracking performance in the field. You'll work alongside experts in robotics, autonomy, and operations to build robust, scalable systems that work today , not just in simulation.

In this role, you will :

• Explore and integrate new sensors, particularly cameras, to improve robot perception.
• Develop and optimize perception models (detection, segmentation, classification) using classical and deep learning techniques.
• Calibrate cameras and refine sensor alignment for accurate real-world performance.
• Work on ML infrastructure, including data collection, annotation, and model training pipelines.
• Implement sensor fusion techniques to combine data from multiple sources.
• Develop tracking algorithms to improve object identification and movement prediction.
• Manipulate 3D geometry, including point cloud processing and camera transforms.
• Scale and refine the perception infrastructure to support our company’s growth.
• Collaborate with the robotics team to transition to modern platforms and technologies.
• Develop new perception models to support expanding customer needs and meal types.
• Improve and scale our perception infrastructure to meet growing demand.
• Assist in integrating new cameras and sensors for enhanced robotic vision.
• Contribute to system-wide improvements that increase efficiency and accuracy.

What You Bring :

Nice-to-have :

Chef is an early-stage startup where equity is a major part of the compensation package. As the company secures more capital, we will gradually increase salary and cash compensation. The starting salary will depend on seniority.

In addition to salary and early-stage equity, we offer a comprehensive benefits package that includes medical, dental, and vision insurance, commuter benefits, flexible paid time off (PTO), catered lunch, and 401(k) matching.

Equal Opportunity Employer

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizen status, uniform service member and veteran status, marital status, age, pregnancy status, protected medical condition, genetic information, disability, or any other protected status.

Multiple studies have found that a higher percentage of women and BIPOC candidates won't apply if they don't meet every listed qualification. Chef values candidates of all backgrounds. If you find yourself excited by our mission but you don't check every box in the description, we encourage you to apply anyway!

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.