Staff / Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Collision Avoidance System

Zoox is hiring a Staff / Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Collision Avoidance System in Foster City, United States. It pays $291k-$409k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Zoox.

Level's read on this job

Level rates this machine learning engineer role Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
Pay on this posting starts 48% higher than the typical machine learning engineer posting on Level.
Level classes it as a lead role.
Zoox has 240 other open roles on Level.
Posted within the past week.

AI in this role

The Collision Avoidance System (CAS) is Zoox's independent safety layer. It runs alongside our main autonomy stack, constantly watches for imminent collisions, and reacts within milliseconds to prevent or reduce them. By using different methods and data paths than the main stack, CAS gives our robotaxi a second, diverse line of defense in the most challenging dense urban environments.
As a Staff or Senior Staff engineer, you will be the technical lead for CAS algorithms, with a focus on CAS perception. You will shape how CAS sees the world, combining interpretable geometric methods with machine learning, and you will own the architecture and roadmap that take these capabilities from idea to safe, real-time deployment on our fleet. Your work will directly affect the safety of every rider and road user around our vehicles.

In this role, you will:

Serve as the technical lead and architect for CAS perception, defining how lidar, radar, and camera data become reliable obstacle detection, tracking, and collision-risk estimates under tight latency and compute budgets
Design, implement, and ship both machine learning and classical perception algorithms (e.g., point-cloud geometry, ground estimation, clustering, state estimation and tracking, learned detection and segmentation, sensor fusion) in production-quality, safety-critical C++
Own the end-to-end CAS algorithm architecture and multi-release technical roadmap, making clear trade-offs between safety, performance, latency, compute, and ML vs. non-ML approaches
Partner across CAS perception, behavior and planning, and validation to define interfaces, requirements, metrics, and evaluation strategies that show the system is safe and ready to launch
Work with sensor, system performance, safety strategy, and main autonomy teams to drive cross-team technical decisions, while mentoring engineers and raising the technical bar across CAS

Qualifications

BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or a related field, or equivalent experience
At least 10 years of experience developing perception or related algorithms for robotics, autonomous vehicles, or other real-time systems
Deep expertise in 3D perception from lidar, radar, and/or camera, with hands-on experience in both machine learning (detection, segmentation, fusion) and classical methods (geometry, state estimation, tracking)
Strong C++ or Python skills and a track record of shipping efficient, reliable real-time software to production
Experience leading the architecture and technical roadmap of a complex production system across multiple teams

Bonus Qualifications

Conference or Journal publications in Machine Learning or Robotics-related venues
Experience with safety-critical systems or functional safety practices (e.g., ISO 26262, SOTIF), collision avoidance, emergency braking, prediction, or planning systems for autonomous vehicles
Experience optimizing and deploying models or algorithms on onboard compute (e.g., GPU / CUDA, TensorRT)

How we rate this

Staff / Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Collision Avoidance System at Zoox rates 97 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Key facts

Staff / Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Collision Avoidance System is an open job at Zoox.
Level rates this role AI Level 4 of 4: Builds AI.
The listed salary is $291k-$409k a year.
The role is based in Foster City, CA.
The job was posted on November 4, 2026.
Seniority: lead.
Applications are handled by Zoox. Apply on Zoox