Applied Intuition

Technical Lead Manager - Perception, Self-Driving Systems

Sunnyvale, California, United States · Contract

Sponsorship not specified$232k-$298kDetected 71 days ago

PythonC++Machine LearningDeep LearningNLPA/B Testing

About the role

This is a single combined model: shared backbone, multi-task heads, serving every SDS program from the same codebase.
The same model runs on a passenger car in Los Angeles, a truck in rural Japan, and an offroad vehicle in the Philippines.
Different sensor configurations, different road geometries, different weather distributions, one model.

You will lead the team that trains, evaluates, and ships this model, and you will be hands-on in the architecture and training decisions that drive its performance.
Lead training and iteration cycles hands-on. You will be in the data, the eval dashboards, and the failure analysis. When perception regresses in a new geography or road type, you own understanding why and fixing it.
Manage the model lifecycle from training through quantization and deployment on embedded compute, including device-specific optimizations. Close the gap between what the model does offboard and what it does on the vehicle.
Recruit, develop, and technically lead a team of perception engineers. Set high technical standards and create a culture of rigorous experimentation and measurement.
Own model performance across the full deployment surface: highway, urban, residential, ramps, complex intersections, poor weather, hilly terrain. You care about on-vehicle driving outcomes, not just offline metrics.
Experience building production perception systems, especially camera-only or camera-first solutions.

2+ years managing or technically leading a perception team, with ability to both set direction and contribute to architecture and training decisions directly.

Familiarity with occupancy-based scene representations, sparse query-based architectures, or temporal aggregation approaches.
Experience reducing or removing map dependencies in perception systems.
Experience with closed-loop simulation for perception model evaluation (neural sim, log sim, scenario-based testing).
Experience at an AV company that has shipped perception to production.
Please reference the job posting's subtitle for where this position will be located.
Don't meet every single requirement?
If you're excited about this role but your past experience doesn't align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway.
You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

About Applied Intuition
Applied Intuition, Inc. is powering the future of physical AI.
Applied Intuition is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with offices in Washington, D.C.; San Diego; Ft.
Walton Beach, Florida; Ann Arbor, Michigan; London; Stuttgart; Munich; Stockholm; Bangalore; Seoul; and Tokyo.
Learn more at applied.co.

at Applied Intuition for eligible roles includes base salary, equity, and benefits.
Applied Intuition pay ranges reflect the minimum and maximum intended target base salary for new hire salaries for the position.
For pay transparency purposes, the base salary range for this full-time position in the location listed is: $231,900 - $298,100 USD annually.

5+ years in ML/deep learning for perception or 3D scene understanding.
Deep hands-on experience training and deploying vision models at scale.
Note that benefits are subject to change and may vary based on jurisdiction of employment.

Drive a camera-first perception strategy. The goal is to progressively reduce dependencies on HD maps and lidar. How to get there is part of the job.
We are looking for a Technical Lead Manager to own the perception model at the core of our autonomy stack.

This listing is sourced directly from Applied Intuition's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.