Senior Software Machine Learning Engineer (Teradyne, California)

About the role

We're seeking an exceptional Senior AI/ML Engineer to join our advanced Physical AI engineering team at the forefront of industrial robotic innovation. This role sits at the intersection of cutting-edge AI technology and real-world product deployment, where you'll help define what's possible in physical AI for both autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and industrial robotic arms.

Our team is building differentiating solutions that push the boundaries of what robots can perceive, understand, and interact with in dynamic real-world environments. You'll work alongside world-class engineers to deliver full-stack AI solutions that don't just work in simulation—they thrive in our customers' facilities.

You'll lead the development and deployment of physical AI capabilities that enable robots to navigate, manipulate, and interact with their environments with unprecedented intelligence. This includes advancing our work in obstacle detection, object identification and classification, pose estimation, SLAM technologies, and precision localization systems. Working across our platform for simulation and data generation, you'll help engineer solutions that leverage diverse sensor modalities—from RGBD cameras and LiDAR to Time-of-Flight sensors—making informed trade-offs based on performance, cost, and application requirements.

You'll be responsible for taking AI innovations from concept through production deployment and ongoing customer support. As a senior member of the team, you'll collaborate closely with R&D teams at Universal Robots and Mobile Industrial Robots, helping shape the future of collaborative robotics and autonomous mobile platforms across the Teradyne Robotics portfolio.

Critical to this role: You must approach your work with scientific rigor. This means deeply understanding the performance characteristics, quality metrics, and limitations of every model you build. You'll need to systematically analyze how successive training runs impact these qualities, maintaining clear visibility into what's improving, what's regressing, and why. We build solutions our customers trust, and that trust is earned through rigorous validation and honest assessment of capabilities and boundaries.

Responsibilities

• Lead the development and deployment of physical AI capabilities for industrial robots, including obstacle detection, object identification and classification, pose estimation, SLAM, and precision localization systems.
• Architect AI solutions leveraging diverse sensor technologies (RGBD, LiDAR, ToF) while considering performance, cost, and application trade-offs.
• Take AI innovations from concept through production deployment and customer support.
• Collaborate with R&D teams at Universal Robots and Mobile Industrial Robots to shape the future of collaborative robotics and autonomous mobile platforms.
• Rigorously evaluate ML model performance, establish meaningful metrics, and track quality across training iterations.
• Utilize simulation environments to accelerate engineering and validation workflows.
• Integrate AI/ML capabilities into existing robotics software stacks.
• Work in cross-functional teams to build complete systems, not just isolated algorithms.

Requirements

• Deep understanding of sensor technologies (RGBD, LiDAR, ToF) and their strengths/limitations.
• Experience shipping AI-powered products to market and supporting them in production customer environments.
• Good software engineering fundamentals with experience integrating AI/ML into robotics software stacks.
• Expertise in data science and data engineering—building AI solutions on great data.
• Collaborative mindset with experience in cross-functional teams.
• Demonstrated ability to rigorously evaluate ML model performance and establish metrics.
• Experience utilizing simulation environments for engineering and validation.

Qualifications

• Core robotics AI concepts: obstacle detection, object identification and classification, pose estimation.
• Knowledge of various SLAM approaches and their trade-offs.
• Experience with localization techniques from precision to relative positioning.
• Hands-on experience with both robotic manipulators and mobile platforms.
• Experience with NVIDIA Isaac platform and tools.
• Background working with AMRs or industrial robotic arms in production settings.
• Knowledge of Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models and their application to robotics.
• Contributions to robotics or AI research communities.

Why this role matters

You'll be joining a team that's already delivered mature platforms for simulation and data generation across multiple problem domains. We're not just building technology for tomorrow—we're deploying it today, solving real problems for customers in industrial automation while continuously pushing the state of the art.

At Teradyne Robotics, you'll have the unique opportunity to impact both mobile robotics and collaborative manipulation platforms used by thousands of customers worldwide. This is an onsite position with remote flexibility. Some travel will be required.

Pay

The base salary range for this role is $241,800-$386,900. This range is a good faith estimate, and the amount of base salary will correspond with experience and skill set. This range can also fluctuate depending on demand and location. This job is eligible for discretionary bonus(es) based on financial performance.