Principal Perception Architect

Job description

Career Area: Technology, Digital and Data Job Description: Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc. When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do – but also about each other. We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here – we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it. Help Build the Future of Caterpillar At Caterpillar, technology always has a purpose, which is to solve our customers’ toughest challenges. Through Cat Technology, we are solving problems by building the intelligence layer that connects machines, data, and people to make jobsites safer, more productive, and more sustainable. By combining deep domain expertise in physical systems with software, connectivity, autonomy, and AI, we deliver solutions that work in the real world—on real jobsites, at global scale. You’ll build and deploy against one of the most unique data foundations—over 1.6 million connected assets generating real-world data daily. These data and platform capabilities are enabling the development of AI models, edge computing architectures, and software systems that scale across fleets, products, and industries. The result will be a new generation of machines that continuously learn, improve, and deliver performance at scale. Be Part of What’s Next in Autonomous Construction Sites Construction autonomy is one of the most complex challenges in applied AI, and at Caterpillar, advancements in physical AI, simulation, sensing, and edge computing are turning things that once felt impossible—intelligent machines operating in dynamic jobsites—into reality. Our connected ecosystem brings together massive volumes of high-quality data to create a foundation where engineers like you can build and deploy against. If this work motivates you, we invite you to join our team. In these roles, you’ll work at the intersection of the physical and digital worlds. You’ll help design and deliver intelligent systems that enable machines to perceive their environment, make informed decisions, and support safer, more productive operations. Apply today to build the new era of construction autonomy at Caterpillar. Job Summary: We are seeking a Principal Perception Architect / Team Lead to define and lead the end-to-end perception architecture for advanced autonomous machine systems. This role will be responsible for shaping how machines sense, understand, represent, validate, and act on the external world in real operating environments. The Principal Perception Architect will serve as the senior technical leader for the Perception Architecture Team, owning the overall perception system architecture across sensor integration, sensor fusion, machine learning-based perception, scene understanding, world model inputs, perception data flow, validation, and safety analysis. This person will ensure that perception capabilities are not developed as isolated algorithms, but as part of a complete autonomy architecture that supports real-time machine behavior, edge deployment, simulation, validation, and safe operation. This role requires a strong systems thinker who can connect perception technology with actual machine autonomy needs. The ideal candidate will understand how cameras, lidar, radar, stereo, ultrasonic, GNSS, machine state data, perception models, world models, and edge compute platforms come together to support autonomous operation. They must be comfortable making complex architecture tradeoffs across perception accuracy, latency, compute, cost, sensor coverage, robustness, safety, scalability, and field reliability. The Principal Perception Architect will work closely with the Robotics team to ensure perception outputs are useful for planning, control, and machine behavior. They will also partner with Edge Architecture, Machine Platform, Simulation, Validation, Safety, and Product teams to ensure perception outputs are deployable, replayable, testable, traceable, and ready for real-world autonomy use. A major part of this role is defining clear technical contracts between perception and downstream consumers, including world model services, robotics autonomy logic, simulation systems, validation pipelines, and edge runtime platforms. This position is both a deep technical architecture role and a team leadership role. The Principal Perception Architect will guide other architects across sensor integration and fusion, perception machine learning, perception data and simulation, and perception validation and safety analysis. They will be expected to set direction, drive architecture reviews, resolve cross-domain technical conflicts, identify system-level risks, and create a practical roadmap that moves perception capabilities from concept to machine-ready autonomy. What You Will Do: Define and own the end-to-end perception architecture for autonomous machine systems, including sensor integration, sensor fusion, perception ML, scene understanding, world model inputs, data flow, validation, and safety analysis. Lead the Perception Architecture Team by setting technical direction, aligning architecture priorities, guiding key design decisions, and ensuring the team works as one cohesive architecture function. Create the perception technical roadmap that connects near-term product needs with long-term autonomy capability, scalability, reliability, and platform reuse. Drive architecture decisions and tradeoffs across perception accuracy, latency, compute usage, sensor coverage, cost, power, robustness, safety, and deployability on edge platforms. Ensure perception architecture supports real-world operating conditions, including sensor degradation, harsh environments, blind spots, poor visibility, machine vibration, calibration drift, compute limits, and uncertain or incomp