Tech Lead, Perception

Who we are Gatik, the leader in autonomous middle-mile logistics, is revolutionizing the B2B supply chain with its autonomous transportation-as-a-service (ATaaS) solution and prioritizing safe, consistent deliveries while streamlining freight movement by reducing congestion. The company focuses on short-haul, B2B logistics for Fortune 500 retailers and in 2021 launched the world’s first fully driverless commercial transportation service with Walmart. Gatik's Class 3-7 autonomous trucks are commercially deployed across major markets, including Texas, Arkansas, and Ontario, Canada, driving innovation in freight transportation.  The company's proprietary Level 4 autonomous technology, Gatik Carrier™, is custom-built to transport freight safely and efficiently between pick-up and drop-off locations on the middle mile. With robust capabilities in both highway and urban environments, Gatik Carrier™ serves as an all-encompassing solution that integrates advanced software and hardware powering the fleet, facilitating effortless integration into customers' logistics operations.  About the role We are currently looking for an experienced Technical Lead with specialized skills in Computer Vision specifically related to Autonomous Driving applications - LiDAR, camera, and radar Perception technologies. As a key member of our team, you will be responsible for developing and implementing Machine Learning models that accurately detect and track the surrounding environment, thereby enabling safe and reliable behavior downstream processing for our AVs. In this pivotal role, you'll be instrumental in designing, implementing, and deploying the ML algorithms that enable our trucks to safely navigate and operate in complex, dynamic environments both on-vehicle and within simulation environments for validation. This position requires a strong technical and ML background, hands-on software engineering experience, and a knack for technically lead engineers. You will collaborate with a team of experts in AI Research, robotics, and software engineering to push the boundaries of what's possible in autonomous trucking. What you'll do Develop and / or adjust existing state-of-the-art perception algorithms for autonomous vehicles to advance / complement research in sensor fusion, 3D object detection, segmentation, and tracking in complex dynamic environments Work on multiple parts of the Perception ML pipeline: 2D and 3D, closed and open vocabulary detection, data-driven tracking, classification and segmentation Design and implement sensor fusion, sensor degradation, and other safety-critical systems Lead initiatives to collect, augment, and utilize large-scale datasets from sensors such as cameras, LiDAR, and radar for training and validating perception models under various driving conditions Develop robust testing and validation frameworks to ensure the reliability and safety of the perception systems across diverse scenarios and edge cases Conduct thorough validation and testing of ML models in simulation and real-world environments to ensure robust performance and generalization Analyze model performance and identify areas for improvement, iterating on design and implementation to enhance prediction accuracy and reliability Document model architectures, methodologies, and results clearly and concisely Collaborate closely with the Data Engineering and AI Research teams to define project requirements, formulate innovative concepts, and co-design ML models and be responsible for their effective deployment in a real-world trucking environment Participate in hiring process for and manage the top notch ML Perception engineers What we're looking for Ph.D. or highly qualified M.S. candidate in one or more of the following areas: Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Mathematics, or a related field You have at least 1-3 years of hands-on experience in one or more of the following areas: Autonomous Driving (preferable), Robotics, or Deep Learning in general  You have at least 1-3 years of research experience in one or more of the following areas: Perception (preferable), 2D and 3D Computer Vision, Statistics, Probability theory  You have at least 1 year of technical leadership experience inside an industrial setting Experience in data science including data collection, analysis, hypothesis formulation and verification Deep knowledge of Autonomous Driving Perception including 2D vs 3D Detection Camera vs LiDAR vs Radar BEV map ML-based tracking  Sensor fusion Sensor calibration Sensor degradation Strong foundation in data structures, algorithm design, and complexity analysis Experience with latency analysis and optimization of safety critical software systems Expertise in programming languages and tools critical for high-performance computing in Python/C++ including large-scale data processing, parallel programming, code optimization and machine learning including Deep Learning frameworks like TensorFlow/PyTorch  Demonstrated ability to publish research findings in any of the top-tier technical journals and conferences (CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, AAAI, IJCAI, ICLR, ICML, ICRA, CoRL, IROS, etc.) You are passionate about Autonomous Driving! More about Gatik Founded in 2017 by experts in autonomous vehicle technology, Gatik has rapidly expanded its presence to Mountain View, Dallas-Fort Worth, Arkansas, and Toronto. As the first and only company to achieve fully driverless middle-mile commercial deliveries, Gatik holds a unique and defensible position in the AV industry, with a clear trajectory toward sustainable growth and profitability. We have delivered complete, proprietary AV technology - an integration of software and hardware - to enable earlier successes for our clients in constrained Level 4 autonomy.  By choosing the middle mile – with defined point-to-point delivery, we