Perception Engineer

About Radical AI

Radical AI is replacing an R&D process that currently takes 10+ years and $100 million to produce a single discovery. Our self-driving lab platform combines AI with autonomous robotics to run experiments, analyze results, and iterate—continuously, without human bottlenecks. For industries like aerospace, automotive, defense, energy, manufacturing, semiconductors, and space, that means breakthroughs in weeks instead of years.

The Role

As a Perception Engineer in the Robotics and Automation group at Radical AI, you will design, deploy, and scale robust vision-guided automation in fast-moving lab environments.

Your expertise will shape both the physical and systemic implementation of lab automation. You will collaborate closely with Roboticists, Mechatronics, Mechanical Engineers, and Material Scientists to meet rigorous and sometimes dynamic design requirements at an unprecedented deployment speed—bringing open-mindedness and creative fearlessness to ship world-class technology on timelines most teams consider impossible. Not you.

What You'll Do

• Design, implement, and deploy 2D and 3D vision systems for robotic manipulation, inspection, state verification, and sensor fusion
• Develop vision-guided automation solutions integrating cameras, lighting, optics, and robots in laboratory and industrial environments
• Implement perception pipelines for object detection, segmentation, pose estimation, and feature extraction
• Work on classical detection algorithms as well as training and deploying state-of-the-art vision models
• Own camera calibration and system-level accuracy validation
• Integrate vision outputs with robot motion planning, grasping, and task execution
• Collaborate with software, mechatronics, and mechanical teams to translate experimental and operational needs into automated solutions
• Contribute to technical direction, architecture decisions, and best practices across the robotics, perception, and automation software stack

What We're Looking For

Required

• Degree in Robotics, Computer Vision, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field
• 5+ years of experience designing and deploying machine vision systems in robotics or automation environments
• Strong hands-on experience with 2D/3D cameras, lenses, lighting, and optics
• Proficiency in Python and/or C++ for production software development
• Experience integrating vision systems with industrial robots and motion platforms
• Experience solving novel computer vision problems
• Experience with simulation, sim2real and domain randomization in a computer vision domain
• Experience with robotic control frameworks (e.g., ROS/ROS2 or equivalent custom systems)
• Ability to work independently in a hands-on, development-oriented environment.

Nice to Have

• Deep robotics automation experience outside of vision
• Hands on experience developing and integrating VLA models for robotics
• Experience deploying ML and multimodal models on robotic platforms
• Ability to develop novel algorithms for state estimation of fluids and particle flows
• Experience in laboratory automation, materials science, or scientific instrumentation
• Prior startup experience or ownership of systems from early prototype through production