Software Engineer - Onboard Maps

As a new team focused on platformization, the Localization, Calibration, and Mapping team delivers high-integrity solutions that let autonomous systems navigate with precision in real-time, safety-critical environments across consumer automotive, trucking, mining, and construction. The role owns the live map on Applied's onboard stack: a real-time fused estimate of the world built from map priors and live perception. The layer is early and has no incumbent design; the engineer will set the architecture and define the interfaces. Applied Intuition is an in-office company, with full-time employees primarily working from the office 5 days a week, though occasional remote work is possible.

Responsibilities

Own the onboard live-map estimator end to end: fuse HD map priors with live perception into a single, real-time estimate of the world the rest of the stack can trust; Build onboard map change detection: classify situations like boundary shifts, stop-line moves, and road closures from the divergence between map and perception, and define when the planner should stop trusting the map; Define the map trust contracts the planner builds against: confidence semantics, degraded-mode behavior, and the operating points that hold across vehicle programs; Build the evaluation backbone, ground-truth and metrics pipelines, operating points, and regression testing that keep estimator and detector quality from silently drifting; Ship estimation code in modern C++ that meets real-time budgets on embedded compute; Extend the loop offboard over time: aggregate divergence detections across fleet drive logs into map freshness and correction pipelines

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent; 5+ years of experience building production software, including at least one shipped system where they owned the estimation core; State estimation fundamentals proven in production: factor graphs and/or filtering, data association, uncertainty representation and propagation, and 3D geometry and transforms; Experience fusing heterogeneous sources such as prior map data, perception output, and raw sensors, into a single world estimate, with rigorous error characterization; Strong modern C++ and the ability to make estimation code meet real-time budgets on embedded compute; Rigorous evaluation practice: has built ground-truth or metrics pipelines and used them to hold a shipped operating point and prevent regressions; Judgment about uncertainty: understands the difference between an error that degrades gracefully and one that is catastrophic, and designs the system accordingly; Experience defining a system and its interfaces and negotiating those contracts with consumer teams

Nice to have

Map change detection or live/lifelong mapping experience; HD map semantics: lane graphs, topology, map formats and their failure modes; GTSAM or comparable factor-graph frameworks; Lie group methods; Degraded-mode or integrity-monitor design for a safety-relevant function; MS/PhD with a focus on state estimation or SLAM

Benefits

Base salary; Equity in the form of options and/or restricted stock units; Comprehensive health, dental, vision, life and disability insurance coverage; 401k retirement benefits with employer match; Learning and wellness stipends; Paid time off