Sr. Staff Engineer / Principal Robotics SLAM and Positioning Lead

**Hiring in San Diego and Santa Clara

Qualcomm’s Advanced Robotics team is building a production-grade, AI-first robotics software platform that scales from AMRs and industrial robots to next-generation humanoids. By pairing heterogeneous compute (CPU/GPU/DSP/NPU) with robust middleware, safety architecture, and cloud integration, we enable customers to deploy intelligent, reliable, and scalable robotic systems across industries. 

Localization, mapping, and positioning are foundational to this vision—serving as the backbone for autonomy, navigation, manipulation, fleet operations, and system safety.

Role Overview 

As Principal Robotics SLAM and Positioning Lead, you will be the technical owner and architect for Qualcomm’s core localization and mapping services. You will define, build, and evolve a modular, service-oriented SLAM and state estimation stack that operates reliably across diverse robots, sensors, environments, and deployment scales. 

This role requires deep hands-on expertise in SLAM, sensor fusion, calibration, and system observability, combined with strong architectural judgment and cross-team leadership. You will work closely with robotics middleware, perception, controls, hardware, simulation, and cloud teams to deliver production-ready capabilities that customers can deploy confidently at scale. [Robotics_SLAM_FDD | Word], [Robotics_S...ure_Design | PowerPoint] 

Key Responsibilities 

Technical Ownership & Architecture 

• Own the end-to-end architecture for Qualcomm’s SLAM and positioning services, defining clear service boundaries, APIs, data contracts, and performance envelopes. 

• Drive the transition from algorithm prototypes to robust, production-grade services suitable for long-running robotic deployments. 

• Establish design principles for determinism, observability, recoverability, and scalability across on-device and fleet deployments. 

Core Services Development 

You will lead the design and implementation of the following foundational services: 

Calibration Service 

• Online and offline calibration for cameras, IMUs, LiDARs, and other sensors 

• Temporal, intrinsic, extrinsic, and drift calibration with validation and health metrics 

State Estimation / Fusion Service 

• Real‑time multi‑sensor fusion (VIO/VSLAM/LiDAR‑inertial/GNSS where applicable) 

• Factor‑graph or filter‑based estimation with bounded latency and fault tolerance 

Localization Service 

• High‑accuracy localization against local and global maps 

• Support for multi‑session, multi‑map, and multi‑floor environments