Company Background:
Swarmbotics AI is pushing the frontier of advanced machine learning models and architectures on edge devices for swarms of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). We see an urgent need for low-cost intelligent autonomous swarm UGV systems in the defense space. Our primary product is a defense application of swarm UGVs, collectively termed - Attritable, Networked, Tactical Swarm (ANTS). Each UGV in ANTS is an independently-tasked, attritable robot designed for on-demand and autonomous mobility. When operating as a swarm, ANTS is capable of executing advanced and coordinated high-level capabilities across multiple domains.
Stephen Houghton and Drew Watson are the Founders and have decades of experience in self-driving cars and trucks, humanoids, and UAVs with experience from NASA, JPL, Cruise, Embark, McKinsey, Amazon, and the CIA.
Position description:
Swarmbotics AI is seeking a highly skilled Machine Learning / Perception Engineer to design, develop, implement, and own cutting-edge off-road, terrain-aware navigation systems for autonomous DoD ground vehicles. This engineer will play a pivotal role in designing and implementing machine learning-based perception systems that enable our autonomous vehicles to navigate complex and unstructured off-road environments. This engineer will work closely with company leadership to align autonomous navigation capabilities with the Swarmbotics AI product roadmap.
What you’ll do:
- Design, implement, train, and test multiple deep learning models including:
- Deep computer vision models
- Dense disparity prediction models
- Reinforcement learning models
- Vision Language Action (VLA) models
- Object detection and panoptic segmentation models
- Optimize models to run real-time on edge devices (Jetson Orin) through model quantization and distillation
- Deploy trained models in the field
- Write robust Python, PyTorch, and C++ code
- Work collaboratively across multiple teams such as SLAM/localization, navigation, tracking, and swarm intelligence
Required qualifications:
- Minimum 2 years industry experience in ML related field
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, math, or related field
- Strong mathematical foundation of neural networks, transformers, convolutional networks, and statistics
- Python, PyTorch, C++, ROS, ONNX, TensorRT
- Familiarity with modern ML / computer vision tools such as OpenCV, Numpy, and Pillow
- Strong organization and communication skills to work well across teams in a fast-paced startup environment
- Comfort working in the high-paced, fluid environment of a tech startup
- Excitement about contributing to the defense of the United States and its allies
- Must be eligible to work on export-controlled projects.
- Ability to relocate to Phoenix, AZ area
Nice to have qualifications:
- Masters or PhD in computer science, math, engineering, or related field
- Prior robotics experience or autonomous driving background
- Experience with owning an entire data to production model pipeline
- Academic publications in related fields
Top Skills
What We Do
Swarmbotics AI is a low-cost, swarm robotics company for industry and defense. We see a world of ubiquitous low-cost robots transforming almost all aspects of society with an urgent need in the defense industry. We focus on a low-cost BOM, an autonomous stack optimized for off the shelf components, and a global planner that enables swarm capabilities for groups of robots to accomplish sophisticated tasks.
