Senior Software Engineer, Autonomous Systems

At Scythe, we're bringing an industry-leading autonomous battery-powered mower to market that runs on a powerful single-board computer with a custom software stack running everything from sensor interaction, to autonomy, to the cloud and user interactions. As a Senior Software Engineer of Autonomous Systems, you will be responsible for understanding each of our software processes, namely perception, localization, and locomotion, with the possibility of growing into a technical project lead role in the areas. We want you to view our system with a holistic approach, focusing on the responsible for the progress and performance of the technical systems we build. Our autonomous systems are sophisticated, which involve complex interactions between depth mapping, image identification, estimation with/without GNSS/RTK, visual odometry, coverage planning, motion planning, and controls.

You'll play a key role in developing and managing the interactions among first-of-its-kind lawnmower-specific autonomy algorithms that are essential for the safety and reliability of our system. Your leadership will also push the boundary of our autonomous domain via increasing the time and distance without RTK-fixed GNSS and improve our ability to identify key features like boundaries between grass and mulch beds. You will contribute to our long-term strategic vision for autonomous systems, charting the course for new autonomous capabilities to improve future robots. We also expect you to be broadly experienced in wheeled robot motion planning so you can work alongside a locomotion team. We are looking for a team member who can thrive in supporting a fast-paced autonomy team while self-managing your engineering contributions, and to be a collaborative, low-ego teammate who helps Scythe realize its big mission.

What you’ll do at Scythe  

• Engage with our autonomous robot software as an individual contributor, perform reviews, enhance our documentation, and refactor code
• Ensure that the perception, localization, and locomotion teams' objectives remain in sync
• Connect the needs from customer and product teams to feasible engineering solutions
• Become responsible for creating and maintaining a schedule of tasks, projects, and bug fixes, determining reasonable scope for successful completion of goals
• Understand and support the development of engineering-focused initiatives, particularly those that the customer team wouldn't consider, to decrease the frequency of bugs and expedite their resolutions for a more reliable product
• Work with all three autonomy groups, ensuring their capabilities complement each other and potential conflicts are mitigated, such that timelines are aligned for shared success among the groups
• Work with the testing team to find the best ways to test all things relating to perception and localization in the field

What you know well

• How to communicate clearly and regularly with engineers and non-engineers
• Project management, both effective theory and supporting software such as Jira, Trello, or Airtable
• Experience designing, developing, testing, and deploying product-ready software
• Proficiency in a compiled programming language such as C++, Rust, or Go, and their development in large codebases
• Rust, or a willingness to learn the basics so you can understand code from another software engineer
• Experience in developing, deploying, and testing the components of autonomous systems for wheeled robots, such as Kalman filters, map creation, motion planning via graph search and/or sampling-based approaches, high-level decision-making, coverage planning, and collision detection
• Experience with unit and integration testing, continuous integration, simulation-based testing
• Developing algorithms running in real-time in compute-constrained hardware
• Debugging real-time complex systems and finding the root cause
• Mathematical fundamentals in geometry, linear algebra, probability theory, and numerical optimization

What you’ve maybe done

• Developed systems with depth sensors, such as stereo vision or lidar
• Worked to find localization solutions via sensors like IMU, motor encoders, and/or visual measurements
• Spent significant time with real field robots, sensors, and physical hardware
• Worked in multi-robot collaboration and planning

Why Scythe?

• Scythe is an early-stage, but well-capitalized startup. Have a huge impact alongside an awesome team of experts shipping something the world has never before seen.
• Competitive salary and equity compensation
• Fully-sponsored medical, vision, and dental insurance, including 75% funded dependent coverage
• 401(k) retirement plan (non-matching today)
• Headquarters near beautiful Longmont, CO. Enjoy the bounties of nature and open spaces close to home with mountain biking, hiking, skiing and more.
• Satellite offices in Austin, TX and Vero Beach, FL 
• Flexible paid time-off and remote work to let you do your best work where and when you want
• Highly collaborative learning culture where personal freedom, growth, and responsibility are valued
• An opportunity to have an incredible positive impact on the world

Closing

Scythe is a total compensation company, which provides employees a comprehensive salary, equity, and benefit package. However, only the minimum salary amounts are listed here. Scythe carefully considers a wide range of compensation factors, including education, years of experience, competencies and other relevant business considerations. These considerations can cause your compensation to vary along with your compensation mode preferences. The Senior Software Engineer, Autonomous Systems position has an expected minimum annual cash salary of $140,000. The actual pay may be higher depending on your skills, qualifications, and experience. Equity and benefits packages are NOT included in this estimate. Please note that this information is provided for those hired in Colorado only, and this role is open to candidates outside of Colorado as well.

Scythe is an Equal Opportunity employer committed to diversity in the workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, protected veteran status or any other factor protected by applicable local, state or federal laws.