Sr. Staff Engineer / Principal Robotics SLAM and Positioning Lead

**Hiring in San Diego and Santa Clara

Qualcomm’s Advanced Robotics team is building a production-grade, AI-first robotics software platform that scales from AMRs and industrial robots to next-generation humanoids. By pairing heterogeneouscompute(CPU/GPU/DSP/NPU) with robust middleware, safety architecture, and cloud integration, we enable customers to deploy intelligent, reliable, and scalable robotic systems across industries.

Localization, mapping, and positioning are foundational to this vision—serving as the backbone for autonomy, navigation, manipulation, fleet operations, and system safety.

Role Overview

As Principal Robotics SLAM and Positioning Lead, you will be the technical owner and architect for Qualcomm’s core localization and mapping services. You will define, build, and evolve a modular, service-oriented SLAM and state estimation stack thatoperatesreliably across diverse robots, sensors, environments, and deployment scales.

This role requires deep hands-onexpertisein SLAM, sensor fusion, calibration, and system observability, combined with strong architectural judgment and cross-team leadership. You will work closely withroboticsmiddleware,perception, controls, hardware, simulation, and cloud teams to deliver production-ready capabilities that customers can deploy confidently at scale. [Robotics_SLAM_FDD| Word], [Robotics_S...ure_Design| PowerPoint]

Key Responsibilities

Technical Ownership & Architecture

• Own the end-to-end architecture for Qualcomm’s SLAM and positioning services, defining clear service boundaries, APIs, data contracts, and performance envelopes.

• Drive the transition from algorithm prototypes to robust, production-grade services suitable for long-running robotic deployments.

• Establish design principles for determinism, observability, recoverability, and scalability across on-device and fleet deployments.

Core Services Development

You will lead the design and implementation of the following foundational services:

Calibration Service

• Online and offline calibration for cameras, IMUs,LiDARs, and other sensors

• Temporal, intrinsic, extrinsic, and drift calibration with validation and health metrics

State Estimation / Fusion Service

• Real‑timemulti‑sensorfusion (VIO/VSLAM/LiDAR‑inertial/GNSS where applicable)

• Factor‑graphorfilter‑basedestimation with bounded latency and fault tolerance

Localization Service

• High‑accuracylocalization against local and global maps

• Support formulti‑session,multi‑map, andmulti‑floorenvironments

SLAM & Map Management Service

• Consistent map generation, update, merging, and lifecycle management

• Interfaces for map versioning, distribution, andcloud‑assistedworkflows

Re‑localization& Recovery Service

• Robust handling of tracking loss, kidnaps, sensor dropouts, and degraded conditions

• Fast recovery paths with confidence estimation and system signaling

Diagnostics & Health Monitoring

• Continuous monitoring of localization quality, drift, observability, and sensor health

• Exposed metrics, logs, and alerts forfleet‑scaleoperations and debugging

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Partner withroboticsmiddleware, controls,perception, and hardware teams to ensure seamless integration with navigation, planning, and manipulation stacks.

• Collaborate with simulation and validation teams to define regression suites, KPIs, and benchmarking methodologies.

• Influence product roadmaps by translating customer requirements and field learnings into architectural decisions.

Quality, Performance & Delivery

• Establish SLAM KPIs for accuracy, robustness, latency, and recovery behavior across platforms.

• Drive CI/CD practices, test automation, and release readiness criteria for localization services.

• Optimize algorithms and pipelines for Qualcomm SoCs using heterogeneouscomputeefficiently.

• 8+ years of experience developing SLAM, localization, or state estimation systems for real-world robotic or autonomous platforms.

• Strongproficiencyin C++ with production-grade software engineering practices.

• Deep understanding of multi-sensor fusion, calibration, and probabilistic estimation.

• Experience delivering systems that run continuously on real robots, not just in research prototypes.

• Experience with service-oriented or middleware-centric robotics architectures (e.g., ROS2/DDS-based systems).

• Familiarity with map lifecycle management, fleet-scale localization, or cloud-assisted robotics workflows.

• Background in diagnostics, observability, or health monitoring for safety-critical systems.

• Experienceoptimizingrobotics workloads on embedded or heterogeneouscomputeplatforms.

• Track recordof technical leadership influencing architecture across multiple teams.

WhyYou’llLove This Role

• Own one of the most critical technical pillars of Qualcomm’s robotics platform.

• Work on challenging, real-world autonomy problems atscale.

• Influence how SLAM and positioning are productized for the next generation of robots.

• Collaborate with experts across AI, systems, silicon, and robotics.

• Competitive compensation, growth opportunities, and the chance to shape the future of physical AI.

Qualcomm is an equal opportunity employer. If you are an individual with a disability and need an accommodation during the application/hiring process, rest assured that Qualcomm is committed to providing an accessible process. You may e-mail disability-accomodations@qualcomm.com or call Qualcomm's toll-free number found here. Upon request, Qualcomm will provide reasonable accommodations to support individuals with disabilities to be able participate in the hiring process. Qualcomm is also committed to making our workplace accessible for individuals with disabilities. (Keep in mind that this email address is used to provide reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities. We will not respond here to requests for updates on applications or resume inquiries).