Senior Robotics Engineer

Caterpillar Caterpillar · Industrial · Irving, TX

Senior Robotics Engineer at Caterpillar responsible for designing, building, and shipping autonomy components for large off-road machines. The role involves working across the full autonomy stack (perception, planning, control, learning) and taking components from prototype to production on real hardware. Expertise in AI, motion planning, perception, controls, or SLAM is desired, along with C++, Python, and ROS experience. The role emphasizes real-world application and full-lifecycle product experience in robotics.

What you'd actually do

  1. Participating in the processes of test review and analysis, test witnessing and certification of robotics software.
  2. Design, build, and ship autonomy components across perception, planning, control, and learning.
  3. Take work from prototype to production on real hardware.
  4. Bring depth in your specialty while contributing broadly across the stack.
  5. Work in small, outcome-owning pods staffed from our capability benches.

Skills

Required

  • C++
  • Python
  • ROS (or similar) in real robotics systems
  • Full-lifecycle product experience

Nice to have

  • AI
  • motion planning
  • perception
  • controls
  • SLAM
  • Learning-based control or perception
  • foundation / VLA-style models
  • MLOps / training-infrastructure depth

What the JD emphasized

  • production on hardware
  • full-lifecycle product experience
  • real-world / field robotics or autonomous vehicles (on- or off-road)
  • Sim and on-vehicle deployment

Other signals

  • building the intelligence layer that connects machines, data, and people
  • AI models, edge computing architectures, and software systems that scale across fleets, products, and industries
  • new generation of machines that continuously learn, improve, and deliver performance at scale
  • autonomy stack that lets large off-road machines operate themselves
  • perception through motion to control, with modern learning-based methods and a classical robotics foundations
  • robotics generalists: engineers who can work confidently across the full stack
  • own real components end-to-end — from idea and prototype through to production on hardware
  • learning-based control or perception, or foundation / VLA-style models