Perception R&D Lead
Minerva Humanoids
San Francisco, CA, USA
USD 200k-300k / year + Equity
Posted on Apr 30, 2026
About the RoleMinerva Humanoids is developing rugged humanoid robots to do the most dangerous jobs on the planet. Our perception stack is central to understanding complex environments for safe traversal and manipulation, both autonomously and with human direction via telepresence.As a Perception R&D Lead, you will lead the development of algorithms that allow our robots to see, think, and act in their surroundings in real time. You will also have the opportunity to grow the team, manage our cohort of research interns this summer, and shape the direction of our perception roadmap.What You'll Do- Develop scene segmentation pipelines to extract objects of interest from the environment, including interactable objects and collision geometry to avoid.- Write robust algorithms for height map extraction from robot-mounted sensors in motion across unstructured terrain.- Perform state estimation and SLAM using onboard optical, inertial, tactile, radar, and LiDAR sensors.- Ingest, time-synchronize, and fuse heterogeneous sensor streams to build an accurate, low-latency representation of the robot's environment.- Mentor and direct graduate researchers, collaborating with academic partners to publish research and translate results into deployed capabilities.What You'll Bring- M.S. or PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, or a related field (or equivalent industry experience).- Expertise in scene segmentation, sensor fusion, and SLAM.- Experience specifying sensors based on functional requirements and interfacing with them at the driver level.- Deep knowledge of learning-based perception techniques (foundation models, neural implicit representations, or similar).- Production-level proficiency in Python; comfort with C++ a plus.Nice to Have- Relevant publications at top venues (RSS, ICRA, CoRL, CVPR, or similar).- Prior experience mentoring or leading a small research team.- Familiarity with ROS 2, Isaac, or real-time perception deployment on embedded hardware.- Experience with perception in degraded-visibility or GPS-denied environments.Expected Compensation$200,000 - $300,000/annual salary + 1-2% equity + benefitsPay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package for this position may also include other elements dependent on the position offered. Details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment.