Senior Autonomy Software Engineer, Calibration

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 Senior Engineer to join our Calibration, Localization and Mapping (CLAM) team. Someone with deep expertise in multi-sensor calibration for autonomous systems who can ensure our trucks' cameras, lidars, radars, and IMUs are precisely characterized and fused with confidence.

In this role, you will:

Develop and maintain intrinsic and extrinsic calibration algorithms for cameras, lidar, radar, and IMU sensors, and set the technical strategy for these systems.

Build online/self-calibration systems that detect and correct sensor drift or misalignment over the life of the vehicle.

Characterize sensor uncertainty and noise models to support downstream localization and perception fusion, anticipating failure modes before they arise in the field.

Design and maintain tooling for factory calibration, field recalibration, and post-maintenance verification.

Develop and evangelize metrics and automated checks to validate calibration quality and flag degraded sensors.

Troubleshoot calibration issues found in the field or in simulation, driving root-cause fixes and serving as a technical escalation point for complex or ambiguous calibration problems.

Collaborate closely with Localization, Mapping, Perception, and Hardware teams, and guide sensor selection strategy in partnership with Hardware and Sensors teams.

Mentor other engineers and represent CLAM in cross-functional design reviews.

What you'll bring:

Strong technical background. BS, MS, or PhD with academic or industry experience in sensor calibration, computer vision, or robotics.

Skilled in C++ with strong software engineering fundamentals, and experience building high-reliability deployed applications. Code is your craft.

Experience with intrinsic and extrinsic calibration techniques (e.g., camera-lidar calibration, hand-eye calibration, target-based and targetless methods).

Experience with optimization techniques used in calibration (e.g., bundle adjustment, nonlinear least squares, factor graphs).

Solid understanding of sensor uncertainty modeling and how calibration errors propagate into localization and perception.

Solid understanding of metrics, data analysis, and scientific evaluation.

A team player. You take ownership and are interested in the performance of the entire system across engineering disciplines.

Ability to build and iterate quickly, and comfortable defining and building lasting infrastructure components from scratch.

Hands on. Curious. Flexible. Interested in new domains to expand your horizons.

Great communicator. Experience writing clear, concise design documentation to gather feedback across the team.

(Staff-level candidates) Demonstrated ability to set technical direction, influence without direct authority, mentor engineers, and align multiple teams around a shared approach.

Bonus points if you have:

Experience building automated calibration pipelines or in-field self-calibration systems.

Hands-on experience calibrating sensors on a real vehicle fleet.

Experience with point cloud registration or multi-modal sensor fusion.

What we offer:

Competitive compensation package including equity and annual bonuses

Excellent Medical, Dental, and Vision plans through Kaiser Permanente, Cign …