[Hiring] Senior Principal Technical Solution Architect @Cerence

Role Description

The Senior Principal Technical Solution Architect owns the end-to-end software architecture for our humanoid robot applications. You will bridge the gap between cutting-edge AI, robotic operating systems, and physical hardware. In this role, you will guide critical technical decisions, manage physical system constraints, and supervise an agile, high-performing startup development team.

Your Impact

• Own the end-to-end application architecture for humanoid robots.
• Define reusable software platforms spanning robotics, AI, voice, cloud, and edge systems.
• Lead technical decisions involving robotics frameworks, operating systems, SDKs, AI infrastructure, and deployment architectures.
• Guide proof-of-concepts into production-ready customer deployments.
• Collaborate with robotics OEMs, technology partners, and cross-functional engineering teams.

Key Responsibilities

• System Architecture: Design scalable, modular software architectures for humanoid robot applications.
• Tech Stack Selection: Evaluate and select robotic software frameworks, developer SDKs, etc.
• Hardware-Software Co-design: Collaborate closely with mechanical and electrical teams to optimize system latency, compute allocation, thermal envelopes, battery utilization, and power budgets.
• Platform Reuse: Drive a platform strategy enabling modular reuse of application logic across different physical robot forms.
• AI & Agentic Systems: Define how foundation models, agentic orchestration frameworks, memory systems, multimodal AI, and reasoning engines integrate into robot applications.
• Production Readiness: Ensure deployed solutions meet reliability, observability, maintainability, security, and operational requirements.
• Team Supervision: Lead, mentor, and unblock a small, fast-moving startup team of developers.

Qualifications

• Mandatory (Must Have)
• Robotics Domains: Deep understanding of Navigation & Localization (SLAM, Nav2), Manipulation & Motion Planning (MoveIt2), Perception Pipelines, Sensor Fusion, Robot Middleware, DDS communication, and distributed robotics architectures.
• Systems Engineering: Proven experience designing cyber-physical systems operating under compute limitations, thermal constraints, battery optimization, network intermittency, and fail-safe operational requirements.
• Programming: Advanced C++ (17/20) and Python architectural design expertise.
• Operating Systems: Strong mastery of Linux (Ubuntu/Debian), containerized deployments, and embedded computing platforms.
• Leadership: 3+ years managing engineering teams in startup, R&D, robotics, or fast-paced product development environments.
• Experience: 8+ years in robotics, autonomous systems, industrial automation, physical AI, or complex cyber-physical environments.
• Good to Have (Highly Valued Plus)
• Real-Time Linux: PREEMPT_RT and deterministic kernel environments.
• Microcontroller RTOS: Zephyr RTOS, FreeRTOS or low-level embedded control platforms.
• Developer SDKs & Simulation: NVIDIA Isaac SDK, Isaac Sim, Omniverse, Gazebo, Webots, Intel RealSense.
• Safety & Compliance: ISO 13849, IEC 61508, IEC 62443 and Human-Robot Interaction safety requirements.
• AI & Foundation Models: Experience integrating LLMs, VLMs, agentic workflows, multimodal reasoning and edge AI inference platforms.

Benefits

• Generous compensation and benefits package (in addition to the base salary).
• Salary range: $192,500.00 - $290,000.00 USD.
• Annual bonus opportunity.
• Insurance coverage (medical, dental, vision, life, and disability).
• Paid time off.
• Paid holidays.
• Company contribution to the RRSP (Registered Retirement Savings Plan).
• Equity awards for certain positions and levels.
• Remote and/or hybrid work available depending on the position.