Staff Perception Scientist

About the role

We seek a Staff Perception Scientist to advance how Physical AI systems understand the world on Arm. You will research and develop perception methods that transform camera, depth, radar, lidar, audio, and other sensor data into reliable representations for robotic and autonomous decision-making. You will provide scientific and technical leadership from problem formulation and experimentation through optimized on-device deployment. This is a high-impact role at the intersection of computer vision, machine learning, multimodal sensing, robotics, and edge computing.

Responsibilities

Perception research and algorithm development

• Develop innovative methods for detection, segmentation, tracking, localization, scene understanding, and multimodal sensor fusion.
• Formulate research questions, design controlled experiments, and translate promising ideas into robust production algorithms.
• Advance model architectures and representations that remain accurate under motion, occlusion, domain shift, and sensor degradation.

Data, evaluation, and scientific rigor

• Define datasets, labeling strategies, metrics, benchmarks, and evaluation protocols that reflect real-world product requirements.
• Build reproducible training and analysis pipelines, investigate failure modes, and communicate findings with quantitative evidence.
• Develop methods for efficient data selection, synthetic data, weak or self-supervision, and continuous model improvement.

Edge deployment and performance

• Optimize models and algorithms for latency, power, memory, and accuracy across Arm CPUs and heterogeneous AI accelerators.
• Partner with systems engineers to integrate perception pipelines with sensor I/O, runtimes, robotics middleware, and downstream consumers.
• Create reference implementations and diagnostics that make perception behavior observable, testable, and maintainable on-device.

Scientific leadership and collaboration

• Partner with robotics, controls, hardware, product, and customer teams to define perception requirements and system tradeoffs.
• Lead research reviews, mentor scientists and engineers, and guide the technical roadmap for on-device perception.
• Publish, patent, or contribute open work when appropriate, and represent Arm in relevant research and developer communities.

Required Skills and Experience

• 6+ years of experience in applied perception, computer vision, machine learning, or a related field.
• Proficiency in Python and C++ with PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow, or similar frameworks.
• Strong understanding of:
  • Deep learning for visual or multimodal perception, training, evaluation, and failure analysis
  • Probability, optimization, 3D geometry, coordinate transforms, calibration, and sensor fusion
  • Efficient inference, numerical precision, model compression, and edge deployment constraints
• 3+ years of experience moving perception research into real-time or production systems.
• A record of impact through deployed systems, publications, patents, or widely used research artifacts.
• Ability to design rigorous experiments and explain results to research, engineering, and product audiences.
• Excellent scientific judgment, problem-solving, communication, collaboration, and mentoring skills.

Nice To Have Skills and Experience

• PhD or equivalent experience in computer vision, machine learning, robotics, computer science, or a related field.
• Experience with 3D perception, SLAM, visual-inertial estimation, tracking, occupancy, or world models.
• Experience with multimodal models, self-supervised learning, domain adaptation, or continual learning.
• Familiarity with synthetic data, simulation, active learning, and dataset curation.
• Experience with quantization, pruning, distillation, compilers, or heterogeneous accelerators.
• Background in robotics, autonomous systems, industrial vision, or other safety- or reliability-sensitive applications.
• Contributions to open-source perception systems, benchmarks, datasets, or research communities.

Why this role matters

Physical AI depends on perception that is accurate, efficient, and resilient outside controlled cloud environments. Models must interpret changing scenes and imperfect sensors while meeting strict limits on latency, power, memory, privacy, and connectivity. In this role, you will shape perception technology for Arm-powered devices used in robotics, industrial systems, and consumer products. Your work will help intelligent machines understand and respond to the physical world in real time.

In Return

You will have the opportunity to work on important technical challenges in AI and platform engineering as part of a growing team in Seattle. This position offers a chance to contribute to core platform capabilities. You’ll work alongside skilled colleagues from various subject areas and help invent the way new AI services are built and scaled at Arm. In addition to meaningful technical work, Arm offers an environment that values thoughtful engineering, collaboration, and continuous learning. This opportunity suits someone who enjoys solving complex systems problems, working across teams, and contributing to technology important to the future of AI at Arm.

Additional Information

Please note that a relocation package (including visa sponsorship assistance) is offered for this role, for candidates who need it.

Pay

Salary Range: $209,100–$282,900 per year. We value people as individuals and our dedication is to reward people competitively and equitably for the work they do and the skills and experience they bring to Arm. Salary is only one component of Arm's offering. The total reward package will be shared with candidates during the recruitment and selection process.