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Senior Perception Engineer

Caterpillar Inc.
Pittsburgh, United Statesfull_timeVerifiedPosted 23 Sept 2025
💰 $179,640/yr($110,520/yr$179,640/yr)

About the role

Career Area:

Engineering

Job Description:

Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc.

When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do – but also about each other.  We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here – we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it.

Job Summary:

Perception is a key part of Caterpillar's autonomy efforts.  We are a small team with the opportunity to make a big impact.  As Caterpillar is an established company with thousands of products in mining and construction all around the world, the customer pull for autonomy is clear. 

We are looking for a senior perception engineer to join our team of experts in developing cutting-edge autonomous and operator-assisted driving systems. As a senior perception engineer, you will be responsible for designing, implementing, and testing algorithms for sensor fusion, object detection, tracking and classification. You will also collaborate with other engineers and researchers to integrate your solutions into our software stack and hardware platform.

What You Will Do:

  • Solve challenging perception problems for mobile off-road machines.
  • Participate in design and development of high-quality perception software and algorithms to solve our customer needs.
    • Document architecture specifications, software design, verification plans, test cases, operating procedures, and safety procedures.
  • Work with application teams to collect and analyze data on customer experience with robotic and manned platforms. Work with others to analyze and annotate data for ML training. Participate in the iterative ML training cycles to meet perception requirements.
  • Use appropriate tools to debug, test and maintain perception software and assist in the verification and validation process.

Education Requirement:

Requires a degree or multiple degrees in Engineering, Computer Science, Robotics, or related field

What You Will Have:

Artificial Intelligence/Autonomy:

  • Have a working knowledge of mobile robotics perception for autonomy or advanced operator assist systems.  This includes a working knowledge of computer vision, machine learning and deep learning techniques and familiarity with lidar, radar and cameras as perception sensors. 
  • Design, write, test and review autonomy and advanced operator assist perception software
  • Proven ability to work independently and within a team

Software Development Life Cycle & Programming Languages & Application Development Tools:

  • Have extensive experience of the Agile software development life cycle, the C++ and Python programming languages, Eigen, Azure DevOps or Jira for project management and work item tracking, standard software development tools (CMake, Git, SonarQube, Docker, GoogleTest, Artifactory, Clang) used in development of mobile robot perception systems. 
  • Have a working knowledge of cloud compute and storage tools, AWS EC2, S3, and Batch
  • Have experience with ROS or Caterpillar’s Autonomous Infrastructure Software (AIS), OpenCV, Tensorflow/PyTorch, and code development tools.
  • Extensive experience participating in efforts to develop, integrate, or test complex autonomy systems that meet prioritized requirements and time frame constraints for autonomous machine programs focusing on machine safety and productivity.
  • Ability to solve complex issues spanning multiple subsystems.

Problem Solving:

Have extensive experience on Perception for mobile robotics with the following:

  • Experience solving challenging perception problems in autonomy and operator assist systems
  • A passion for innovation and problem-solving
  • Excellent communication and teamwork skills
  • Strong mathematics skills

Additional Information

  • This position requires the candidate to work onsite five days a week at the Pittsburgh, PA office.
  • Domestic Relocation assistance is available for this position
  • This position may require 10% travel
  • Sponsorship is Not available for this position

Summary Pay Range:

$110,520.00 - $179,640.00

Compensation and benefits offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, job level, market location, job-related kn

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Company

Caterpillar Inc.

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