Jobs Companies Kodiak Technical Lead, Multimodal Transformers

Sobre esta vaga de Technical Lead, Multimodal Transformers na Kodiak

Kodiak · Presencial · Mountain View, CA

Kodiak Robotics, Inc. was founded in 2018 and has become a leader in autonomous ground transportation committed to a safer and more efficient future for all. The company has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) powered technology stack purpose-built for commercial trucking and the public sector. The company delivers freight daily for its customers across the southern United States using its autonomous technology. In 2024, Kodiak became the first known company to publicly announce delivering a driverless semi-truck to a customer. Kodiak is also leveraging its commercial self-driving software to develop, test and deploy autonomous capabilities for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Kodiak's autonomy stack is built on AI that fuses diverse sensor streams into a unified, actionable understanding of the world. We are developing GigaFusionNet, a large-scale multimodal transformer that learns rich, joint representations across camera, LiDAR, and radar through attention-based fusion. We are looking for a technical leader to own the architecture direction of this effort and grow the engineers building it.

This is a senior individual contributor role with significant scope. You will set technical direction for multimodal fusion at Kodiak, lead the workstream executing against it, and be accountable for the results landing on trucks.

In this role, you will:
  • Own the architecture roadmap for multimodal transformers that fuse camera, LiDAR, and radar into unified representations
  • Lead the project end to end: problem framing, experiment design, implementation, and production deployment
  • Drive research direction on cross-modal attention, token fusion strategies, and efficient multi-stream tokenization, and make the calls on what gets built
  • Set the technical bar through design reviews, code reviews, and architectural decisions on scalable training pipelines
  • Mentor junior and mid-level engineers, and raise the level of research execution across the org
  • Define the pretraining strategy, including self-supervised and contrastive objectives that learn transferable multimodal representations
  • Partner with perception, planning, and infrastructure leads to align model design with system-level latency and compute budgets
What you’ll bring:
  • PhD with 5+ years of industry experience, or MS/BS with 8+ years, in AI, Computer Science, or a related field
  • Track record of leading multi-engineer technical efforts from research through production
  • Deep expertise in transformer architectures, particularly in multimodal or multi-stream settings
  • Strong command of cross-attention, token fusion, and modality alignment techniques
  • Experience mentoring engineers and growing technical talent
  • Expert proficiency in Python and PyTorch, including large-scale distributed training and mixed-precision optimization
  • Ability to influence technical direction across teams without formal authority
  • Passion for building AI that reasons over the full breadth of sensory input to operate safely in the real world

What we offer:

  • Competitive compensation package including equity and annual bonuses
  • Excellent Medical, Dental, and Vision plans through Kaiser Permanente, Cigna, and  MetLife (including a medical plan with infertility benefits)
  • MetLife Legal Services, Identity & Fraud Protection, Hospital Indemnity Insurance, Accident Insurance, & Critical Illness Insurance
  • Flexible PTO, 10 paid holidays, and generous parental leave policies
  • Our office is centrally located in Mountain View, CA
  • Office perks: dog-friendly, free catered lunch, a fully stocked kitchen, and free EV charging
  • Long Term Disability, Short Term Disability, Life Insurance
  • Wellbeing Benefits - Headspace through Cigna, Calm through Kaiser, One Medical, Gympass, Spring Health through Cigna, Rula (mental health navigation) 
  • Fidelity 401(k)
  • Commuter, FSA, Dependent Care FSA, HSA
  • Various incentive programs (referral bonuses, patent bonuses, etc.)

The pay range listed below reflects the base salary in our SF/Silicon Valley location, across several internal levels. Actual starting pay will be based on job-related factors including: work location, experience, relevant training, education, skill level and performance during interview. Total compensation at Kodiak includes base pay, equity, bonus and a competitive benefits package

California Pay Range
$230,000$300,000 USD
 
At Kodiak, we strive to build a diverse community working towards our common company goals in a safe and collaborative environment where harassment of any kind is strictly prohibited. Kodiak is committed to equal opportunity employment regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or veteran status, or any other basis protected by applicable law.
 
In alignment with its business operations, Kodiak adheres to all relevant statutes, regulations, and administrative prerequisites. Accordingly, roles that carry more sensitive requirements may be limited to candidates that can satisfy additional scrutiny and eligibility for such positions may hinge on verification of a candidate’s residence, U.S. person status, and/or citizenship status. Should the position require, and Kodiak determines that a candidate’s residence, U.S. person status, and/or citizenship status necessitate an export license, bar the candidate from the position, or otherwise fall under national security-related restrictions, Kodiak will consider the candidate for alternative positions unaffected by such restrictions, under terms and conditions set forth at Kodiak’s sole discretion, or, as an alternative, opt not to proceed with the candidate’s application. If applicable, Kodiak may provide visa sponsorship for eligible candidates.
 
We use a third-party AI tool (Endorsed) to assist in the initial screening of applications. As part of the evaluation process, we provide Endorsed with job requirements and candidate-submitted applications. Final hiring decisions are made by our human recruitment team, and no automated system makes the ultimate decision regarding hiring. Certain features of the platform may qualify it as an Automated Employment Decision Tool (AEDT) under applicable regulations. We began using Endorsed on January 1, 2026. You can review the independent bias audit report covering our use of Endorsed [here](https://endorsed.com/local-law-144). By submitting your application, you acknowledge that your application may be processed by AI systems as part of the screening and selection process. If you have any questions or would like to request a separate review of your application, please contact [email protected] with "Separate Review Request" in the email subject line.

 

Pronto para se candidatar à Kodiak?
Candidatar-se à Kodiak

Como este salário de Tech Lead se compara

Esta vaga paga $265,000/yracima da faixa típica para vagas de Tech Lead.

$186,300 a mediana $243,250 $268,000

Faixa típica $220,125–$260,535/yr, com base em 9 vagas de Tech Lead comparáveis na JobsRadar (pagamento anualizado em USD). Ver insights salariais de Tech Lead →

Vagas semelhantes

MatX
Lead Software Engineer, Kernels
MatX
⚡ Candidate-se cedo Mountain View, CA Presencial
● Nova 👁 Vista ✓ Candidatada há 1d
Black Duck Software, Inc.
Lead Sales Engineer (West)
Black Duck Software, Inc.
⚡ Candidate-se cedo Mountain View, CA Presencial $141,200–$211,800
● Nova 👁 Vista ✓ Candidatada há 5d
Lightmatter
Hardware Systems Technical Lead
Lightmatter
⚡ Candidate-se cedo Mountain View, CA Presencial $217,000–$256,000
● Nova 👁 Vista ✓ Candidatada há 1sem
Lightmatter
Analog IC Design Engineer, Tech Lead
Lightmatter
⚡ Candidate-se cedo Mountain View, CA; Toronto, ON Presencial $230,000–$270,000
● Nova 👁 Vista ✓ Candidatada há 1sem
ID.me
Principal Tech Lead Manager - Data Platform & Reliability Engineering
ID.me
⚡ Candidate-se cedo Mountain View, California, Uni... Presencial $242,693–$275,400
● Nova 👁 Vista ✓ Candidatada há 1sem
Glean
Lead Site Reliability Engineer
Glean
⚡ Candidate-se cedo Mountain View, CA Híbrido $200,000–$260,000
● Nova 👁 Vista ✓ Candidatada há 2sem
MS
Senior Mechanical Engineer - Spacecraft Mission Mechanical Lead
Muon Space
⚡ Candidate-se cedo San Jose, CA Presencial $183,000–$198,000
● Nova 👁 Vista ✓ Candidatada há 2m
Glean
Tech Lead Manager, Admin Console
Glean
⚡ Candidate-se cedo Mountain View, CA Híbrido $250,000–$300,000
● Nova 👁 Vista ✓ Candidatada há 3m
Glean
Tech Lead Manager, Admin Console
Glean
⚡ Candidate-se cedo San Francisco, CA Híbrido $250,000–$300,000
● Nova 👁 Vista ✓ Candidatada há 3m

Cadastre-se para receber sugestões sob medida com base nas vagas que você abre e nas buscas que você salva.

Mais vagas na Kodiak

Ver todas as vagas na Kodiak →

Candidatar-se agora
🤖

Opa — calma aí

A JobsRadar foi feita para pessoas de verdade passando por um momento difícil na busca por emprego — não para requisições automatizadas. Você está clicando rápido demais e agora está temporariamente bloqueado.

Volte mais tarde. Se você está mesmo procurando emprego, estamos com você — apenas aja como um ser humano.

Catch your next role the second it’s posted.

Create a free account and we’ll watch the boards for you — the instant a job matches your search, it lands in your inbox or Telegram. No digging, no refreshing.

Create free account

Free forever · takes 30 seconds · already have one?

Ganhe vantagem na sua busca por emprego.

Entre no nosso canal do Telegram para o que ajuda você a conseguir a vaga — referências salariais, o pulso semanal do mercado e avisos de novos recursos. Sem spam, só sinal.

Entre no canal — é grátis