Principal RL Engineer, E2E Autonomy

We’re Blue River, a team of innovators driven to create intelligent machinery that solves monumental problems for our customers. We empower our customers – farmers, construction crews, and foresters - to implement safer and more sustainable solutions, driving increased profitability with less reliance on scarce labor. We believe that focusing on the small stuff – pixel-by-pixel and task-by-task - leads to big gains. With our partners at John Deere, we have the ability to bring innovative computer vision, machine learning, robotics, and product management solutions to scale production, maximizing their potential impact.

Our people are at the heart of what we do. Through cross-disciplinary collaboration, this mission-driven and daring team is eager to define the new frontier of mobile robotics. We are always asking hard questions, rapidly iterating, and getting our boots in the field and on-site to figure it out. We won’t give up until we’ve made a tangible and positive impact on the planet.

 

Summary

Our mission is to bring the power of E2E machine learning and robotics to John Deere, revolutionizing how robotic systems are built. We aim to open up previously inaccessible opportunities, delivering autonomy products that customers love.

As a senior RL Engineer, you will help grow and shape our E2E stack. This involves shaping the design of the E2E training and inference pipeline, both on- and off-vehicle and on- and off-prem. You will also help with new models and features. Our E2E team is lean and moving quickly. You should be comfortable and excited about working with ambiguity, helping define what will move the program forward, working across traditional boundaries, and learning new things.

• Employment Type: Full-Time
• Work Location: Santa Clara, CA (expect 3 days in the office)
• Visa sponsorship is available for this position. 

Job Responsibilities

The main job responsibilities include: 

• Design and implement state-of-the-art online and offline reinforcement learning algorithms for complex tasks with long horizons. 
• Formulate reward models and exploration strategies that enable task performance and adherence to strict safety requirements. Enable flexible customer operation across a range of tasks with natural language instructions.
• Enhance policy robustness to challenges such as sensor noise, machine wear, and extreme environmental variability.
• Design and conduct experiments; develop evaluation frameworks for simulation and real-world deployment.
• Collaborate closely with infrastructure engineers to design scalable E2E training systems, including large-scale simulation infrastructure.
• Collaborate with pretraining and robotics engineers to integrate RL seamlessly into the full E2E autonomy stack.
• Drive the E2E vision and act as an ambassador for an E2E-first organization.
• Technical leadership and mentorship: serve as an in-house RL expert, elevating the team through code reviews, algorithmic guidance, and fostering a culture of rigorous scientific experimentation.
• Stay up to date with the latest RL research and integrate advancements into our stack.

Required Experience and Skills

• 3+ years delivering high-performance RL products professionally.
• Proven track record in developing RL models. Prefer experience deploying to production for robotics and boosting key metrics. 
• Expertise in developing simulation environments and tackling the sim-to-real transfer.
• Expertise in designing and developing software for complex systems.
• Comfortable working on new hardware systems and working on new RL/ML/software problems.
• Strong Python coding skills and proficiency with deep learning frameworks like PyTorch.
• Comfortable working across traditional team boundaries to deliver results.
• Excellent brainstorming, creative thinking, mathematical analysis, and communication skills.
• Track record of regularly anticipating technical issues and making architectural and design decisions to avoid them.
• BS/MS/PhD in CS or related field.

Preferred Experience and Skills

• Experience with robotics middleware such as ROS or other robotics-focused software packages.
• Strong CUDA background or other GPU frameworks.
• Experience in multidisciplinary environments. (We’ve got CS, CV/ML, EE, ME, etc.)
• Have worked on embedded systems.
• Experience with system architecture.

At Blue River, we’re passionate about creating an inclusive workplace that promotes and values diversity.  While we have more work to do to advance diversity and inclusion, we’re investing in our programs, including recruiting, mentorship, career development, and learning & development to ensure they support our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion goals. We support each employee in living a full life, enabling a thriving career, and accomplishing a meaningful, challenging mission while collaborating with incredible people. We are dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your experience doesn’t align completely with the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. 

We are an equal-opportunity employer and do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, sex, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, perform essential job functions, and receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request an accommodation. 

The US annual base salary range for this position is $192,000 - $378,000, along with eligibility for Blue River’s bonus and benefit programs.

Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your location during the hiring process. During the recruitment process, we may identify an alternative role or level to which you are more suited. If your ideal role at Blue River differs from the advertised position, we will provide an updated pay range as soon as possible during the hiring process.

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