Software Engineer - Onboard Maps and State Estimation

Applied Intuition, Inc. is powering the future of physical AI. Founded in 2017 and now valued at $15 billion, the Silicon Valley company is creating the digital infrastructure needed to bring intelligence to every moving machine on the planet. Applied Intuition services the automotive, defense, trucking, construction, mining and agriculture industries in three core areas: tools and infrastructure, operating systems, and autonomy. Eighteen of the top 20 global automakers, as well as the United States military and its allies, trust the company’s solutions to deliver physical intelligence. Applied Intuition is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with offices in Washington, D.C.; San Diego; Ft. Walton Beach, Florida; Ann Arbor, Michigan; London; Stuttgart; Munich; Stockholm; Bangalore; Seoul; and Tokyo. Learn more at applied.co.

We are an in-office company, and our expectation is that full-time employees primarily work from their Applied Intuition office 5 days a week. However, we also recognize the importance of flexibility and trust our employees to manage their schedules responsibly. This may include occasional remote work, starting the day with morning meetings from home before heading to the office, or leaving earlier when needed to accommodate family commitments. This in-office expectation does not apply to contractor positions

About the role

Our Localization, Calibration, and Mapping team delivers high-integrity solutions that let autonomous systems navigate with precision in real-time, safety-critical environments — across consumer automotive, trucking, mining, and construction. As a new team focused on platformization, we offer a rare opportunity to own core work leveraged across the entire organization.

HD maps go stale the moment they're built — lanes get repainted, stop lines move, roads close. You'll own the live map on Applied's onboard stack: a real-time fused estimate of the world built from map priors and live perception, from the estimation core to the change-detection and trust semantics the planner consumes, across every vehicle vertical we serve. This layer is early and has no incumbent design. You'll set the architecture and define the interfaces rather than tune inside someone else's system. We encourage engineers to take ownership of technical and product decisions and to interact closely with users to collect feedback.

At Applied Intuition, you will:

• Own the onboard live-map estimator end to end: fuse HD map priors with live perception into a single, real-time estimate of the world the rest of the stack can trust

• Build our onboard map change detection: classify situations like boundary shifts, stop-line moves, and road closures from the divergence between map and perception, and define when the planner should stop trusting the map

• Define the map trust contracts the planner builds against: confidence semantics, degraded-mode behavior, and the operating points that hold across vehicle programs

• Build the evaluation backbone, ground-truth and metrics pipelines, operating points, and regression testing that keep estimator and detector quality from silently drifting

• Ship estimation code in modern C++ that meets real-time budgets on embedded compute

• Extend the loop offboard over time: aggregate divergence detections across fleet drive logs into map freshness and correction pipelines

We're looking for someone who has:

• 5+ years building production software, including at least one shipped system where they owned the estimation core

• State estimation fundamentals proven in production: factor graphs and/or filtering, data association, uncertainty representation and propagation, and 3D geometry and transforms

• Experience fusing heterogeneous sources such as prior map data, perception output, and raw sensors, into a single world estimate, with rigorous error characterization

• Strong modern C++ and the ability to make estimation code meet real-time budgets on embedded compute

• Rigorous evaluation practice: has built ground-truth or metrics pipelines and used them to hold a shipped operating point and prevent regressions

• Judgment about uncertainty: understands the difference between an error that degrades gracefully and one that is catastrophic, and designs the system accordingly

• Experience defining a system and its interfaces and negotiating those contracts with consumer teams

Nice to Have:

• Map change detection or live/lifelong mapping experience

• HD map semantics: lane graphs, topology, map formats and their failure modes

• GTSAM or comparable factor-graph frameworks; Lie group methods

• Degraded-mode or integrity-monitor design for a safety-relevant function

• MS/PhD with a focus on state estimation or SLAM

Compensation at Applied Intuition for eligible roles includes base salary, equity, and benefits. Base salary is a single component of the total compensation package, which may also include equity in the form of options and/or restricted stock units, comprehensive health, dental, vision, life and disability insurance coverage, 401k retirement benefits with employer match, learning and wellness stipends, and paid time off. Note that benefits are subject to change and may vary based on jurisdiction of employment.

Applied Intuition pay ranges reflect the minimum and maximum intended target base salary for new hire salaries for the position. The actual base salary offered to a successful candidate will additionally be influenced by a variety of factors including experience, credentials & certifications, educational attainment, skill level requirements, interview performance, and the level and scope of the position.

Don’t meet every single requirement? If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

Applied Intuition is an equal opportunity employer and federal contractor or subcontractor. Consequently, the parties agree that, as applicable, they will abide by the requirements of 41 CFR 60-1.4(a), 41 CFR 60-300.5(a) and 41 CFR 60-741.5(a) and that these laws are incorporated herein by reference. These regulations prohibit discrimination against qualified individuals based on their status as protected veterans or individuals with disabilities, and prohibit discrimination against all individuals based on their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or national origin. These regulations require that covered prime contractors and subcontractors take affirmative action to employ and advance in employment individuals without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status or disability. The parties also agree that, as applicable, they will abide by the requirements of Executive Order 13496 (29 CFR Part 471, Appendix A to Subpart A), relating to the notice of employee rights under federal labor laws.

FOR US-BASED ROLES: Applied Intuition is committed to providing an accessible and inclusive application and interview experience to applicants who are disabled veterans and other applicants with disabilities or medical conditions. Reasonable accommodations are available, requesting an accommodation will not affect your candidacy in any way, and you are not required to disclose the nature of your disability or medical condition in order to make a request. If you require an accommodation please contact careers@applied.co. We will work with you!