Senior Software Engineer, Kodiak Robotics
Machine Learning Infrastructure
$150-230k
+ Bonus + Equity
Self-driving technology for long-haul trucks
Open for applications
Self-driving technology for long-haul trucks
201-500 employees
Open for applications
$150-230k
+ Bonus + Equity
201-500 employees
Company mission
Kodiak Robotics' mission is to carry freight forward—so people, partners, and the planet thrive.
Role
Who you are
- Strong technical background. BS, MS or PhD with academic or industry experience in designing and implementing deep learning, ML, or data analytics infrastructure. Skilled in Python/C++ and strong problem-solving skills. You ideally also have a strong knowledge of data processing pipelines for training ML models in the cloud
- Very strong software engineering skills and experience building high-reliability applications used by other engineers. You write well-designed, highly maintainable code. Code is your craft
- Solid understanding of metrics, data analysis, and scientific evaluation. Bonus points for understanding the specific subtleties in measuring and evaluating the performance of a robot and its submodules
- A team player. You take ownership and work with the team to deliver exceptional results. You are interested in the performance of the entire system across engineering disciplines
- Ability to build and iterate quickly. You enjoy working fast and smart, and you are comfortable in defining and building lasting infrastructure components from scratch
- Hands on. You are experienced working with production machine learning pipelines, from dataset collection and labeling to training and validation
- Great communicator. You have experience writing clear, concise, and detailed documentation. You can listen and understand what would enable your model development colleagues to measure and refine ML models more quickly and what is necessary to improve the performance of the Kodiak Driver
What the job involves
- We are looking for a highly skilled Infrastructure Engineer to join the Perception team and build world-class deep learning training, evaluation, and deployment infrastructure for the development of the perception and prediction modules of our self-driving semi trucks
- Be responsible for designing and implementing Kodiak’s infrastructure for training, evaluating, and deploying deep learning models in efficient Python and C++ code
- Develop and optimize push-button training pipelines in distributed environments
- Develop metrics to measure model, perception system, and overall self-driving performance
- Build systems to track metrics over time and enable comparison of experiments
- Develop systems for finding failure cases, visualizing predictions, and pinpointing areas for improvement
- Create systems to track, segment, and select data to be used in training or reinforcement, including synthetic and machine-generated labels
- Measure and optimize deep learning network and detection runtime performance using state of the art techniques
- Enable continuous integration and deployment of model improvements
- Collaborate closely with other experts in sensors, perception, prediction, planning, and systems engineering teams
Our take
Global supply chains rely on frictionless long-haul trucking freight networks, but the repetitive and stationary nature of the job has resulted in a lack of willing drivers. Whilst this has been partially resolved through the introduction of self-driving trucks, such systems are notoriously difficult to maintain which ultimately leads to significant downtime.
Kodiak Robotics develops self-driving technology for long-haul trucks, providing wing mirrors built with sensors called Kodiak SensorPods. These sensors provide the technology necessary for the trucks to be driven safely and autonomously and have been designed to be replaced or serviced rapidly to minimize downtime.
Whilst the company’s most significant challenge will present itself as other self-driving truck providers, Kodiak Robotics has taken a unique approach by recognizing the high-maintenance nature of existing self-driving systems, innovating upon this through its easily replaceable SensorPods. Through this approach and several successful rounds of funding, the company aims to fill empty truck driving positions with safer AI drivers, whilst ensuring its technology is quick and simple to maintain.
Steph
Company Specialist
Insights
21% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)
Sep 2023
$75m
CONVERTIBLE
Nov 2021
$125m
SERIES B
Total funding: $240m
Company benefits
- Remote-friendly work environment
- 401k
- Generous PTO policy
- Life insurance
- Assortment of medical (PPO/HMO/HDHP), dental, vision, and FSA plans
- Family-friendly company events
- Dog-friendly office
- Employee-driven fitness classes
- Beautiful, renovated facilities in Mountain View, CA and Lancaster, TX
- Free EV charging
- Trivia and board game nights
Company values
- Safety, first and always - Build procedures to support responsible decision-making. Reinforce safe choices as a community. Safety first always; no breaks, no exceptions
- Intellectual honesty, principled debate - Seek the truth, especially when it’s inconvenient. Speak with passion, but respect diverse points of view to move towards execution
- Disciplined innovation - Focus, efficiency and elegance. Learn from experience. Solve meaningful problems. Behave responsibly
- Better together. For a better future - Seek out best-in-class collaborators. Embrace our ecosystem of diversity—from fellow Kodiak-ers, and customers to the people we share the roads with
- Exceed expectations. Earn respect. Repeat - Deliver seamless experiences wherever possible. Build trust through action. Consistent and constant accountability
Company HQ
Mountain View, CA
Articles
Leadership
Don Burnette
(CEO)Experience as Co-founder of Otto. Software Technical Lead at Uber from 2016 to 2018.
Salary benchmarks
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Diversity & Inclusion at Kodiak Robotics
- At Kodiak, we strive to build a diverse community working towards our common company goals in a safe and collaborative environment where harassment of any kind is strictly prohibited. Kodiak is committed to equal opportunity employment regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or veteran status, or any other basis protected by applicable law.
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