Senior Principal Systems Engineer

Senior Principal Systems Engineer – Humanoid Robotics 

Location: California Bay Area 

Physical AI is transforming how humans interact with intelligent machines. At Cerence, we are extending our leadership in Conversational AI into Humanoid Robotics, building software platforms that enable robots to understand, reason, communicate, and act in the real world. 

Role Overview 

The Senior Principal Systems Engineer owns the end-to-end systems design for our humanoid robot applications, spanning software, AI, and hardware integration. You will bridge the gap between cutting-edge AI, robotic operating systems, and physical hardware. In this role, you will drive critical technical decisions, manage physical system constraints, and guide robotics engineers and AI/ML scientists while staying hands-on in a lean, startup-style setup. 

Your Impact 

• Own the end-to-end system design for humanoid robot applications. 

• 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 and developer SDKs. 

• 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. 

• Project Leadership: Lead the project end to end in a lean, fast-moving startup environment, working closely with robotics engineers and AI/ML scientists. 

Required Skills & Experience 

Mandatory (Must Have) 

• Robotics Domains: Understanding of ROS 2, 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: Knowledge of advanced C++ (17/20) and expertise in Python architectural design. 

• Operating Systems: Mastery of Linux (Ubuntu/Debian), containerized deployments, and embedded computing platforms. 

• 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. 

• Leadership: Experience leading technical projects or small cross-functional teams in startup, R&D, robotics, or fast-paced product development environments. 

Why Join the Team 

• Help define how Conversational AI powers Physical AI and humanoid robotics. 

• Influence product direction, platform strategy, and customer deployments. 

• Work across Robotics, Agentic AI, Conversational AI, Edge AI, and Cloud Platforms. 

• Operate with startup agility backed by Cerence technology and brand. 

Education & Qualifications 

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related discipline. 

What We Offer 

We offer a generous compensation and benefits package (in addition to the base salary), including: 

• Salary range $192,500.00 - $290,000.00 USD. It is not typical for offers to be made at or near the top of the range. The actual salary will be determined based on experience and other job-related factors. 

• Annual bonus opportunity 

• Insurance coverage (medical, dental, vision, life, and disability) 

• Paid time off 

• Paid holidays 
• Company contribution to the 401(k) plan 

• Equity awards for certain positions and levels 

All compensation and benefits are subject to the terms and conditions of the underlying plans or programs, as applicable, and may be amended, terminated, or replaced from time to time. 

Cerence Inc. (Nasdaq: CRNC and www.cerence.com) is the global industry leader in creating unique, moving experiences for the automotive world. Spun out from Nuance in October 2019, Cerence is a new, independent company that has quickly gained traction as a leader in the automotive voice assistant space, working with all of the world’s leading automakers – from Ford and Fiat Chrysler to Daimler, Audi and BMW to Geely and SAIC – to transform how a car feels, responds and learns. Its track record is built on more than 20 years of industry experience and leadership and more than 500 million cars on the road today across more than 70 languages.  

As Cerence looks to the future and continues an ambitious growth agenda, we need someone to join the team and help build the future of voice and AI in cars. This is an exciting opportunity to join Cerence’s passionate, dedicated, global team and be a part of meaningful innovation in a rapidly growing industry. 

Cerence is firmly committed to Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and to compliance with all federal, state and local laws that prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of age, race, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sex, sex stereotyping, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, religion, physical or mental disability, medical condition, marital status, citizenship status, sexual orientation, protected military or veteran status, genetic information and other protected classifications. Cerence Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

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