Senior Principal Perception Engineer

Company Description

About Grab and Our Workplace

Grab is Southeast Asia's leading superapp. From getting your favourite meals delivered to helping you manage your finances and getting around town hassle-free, we've got your back with everything. In Grab, purpose gives us joy and habits build excellence, while harnessing the power of Technology and AI to deliver the mission of driving Southeast Asia forward by economically empowering everyone, with heart, hunger, honour, and humility.

Job Description

Get to Know the Team

Our team develops production-grade robotics and autonomy capabilities for the uniquely complex, diverse logistics of Southeast Asia's cityscapes. We are forward-thinking and practical: advancing perception, planning, and control step by step, with safety evidence as the gate for every milestone. We focus on building robust system capabilities, scaling with uncompromised quality, and collaborating with industry leaders while investing in in-house expertise where it differentiates us.

We are a senior, hands-on engineering group that prizes operational excellence, clear interfaces, and reproducible pipelines.

Get to Know the Role

As the Senior Principal Perception Engineer, you will be the technical anchor and visionary for the perception stack. You will architect, design, and deliver systems that transform raw sensor data into a reliable, real-time understanding of dynamic, high-density cityscapes. This is a hands-on role with broad technical ownership, setting the direction and standards for perception while driving the development of production-grade solutions.

You will report to the Head of Engineering and will contribute directly to both technical and strategic leadership.

The Critical Tasks You Will Perform

Architecture & Technical Strategy

• Own the technical vision and roadmap for the perception system, from sensor inputs through tracking and scene understanding.
• Architect a scalable, production-grade perception stack designed specifically for the challenges of Southeast Asian environments.
• Establish the standard for excellence in engineering rigor, system design, testability, and operational readiness.

Algorithm & Model Development

• Lead the development and delivery of core perception algorithms, including 2D/3D detection, multi-sensor fusion, multi-object tracking, and segmentation.
• Write clean, efficient, and production-ready code in C++ and Python.
• Own the full lifecycle of models: data curation, training, evaluation, deployment, and inference optimization (e.g., ONNX/TensorRT).
• Assess the strengths and limitations of the developed perception solutions, and iteratively improve them through development and performance optimization.

Collaboration & Mentorship

• Partner with other technical anchors in Planning, Mapping, and Integration to solve system-level challenges and deliver a cohesive, reliable system.
• Mentor and grow our senior engineers, acting as a force multiplier for the entire team.
• Translate advances in perception research into robust, production-ready systems.

Qualifications

What Essential Skills You Will Need

• 8+ years of experience in machine learning, with a focus on computer vision and/or deep learning for perception.
• Track record of designing, building, and shipping production-grade perception systems for autonomy, ADAS, or complex robotics products.
• Expert-level proficiency in modern C++ and Python for resource-constrained, real-time applications.
• Deep knowledge in several of: 2D/3D detection, sensor fusion, tracking, segmentation, model optimization/quantization.
• Extensive hands-on experience with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow, including deployment toolchains (e.g., ONNX/TensorRT or equivalent).
• Demonstrated leadership in the architecture and design of complex, safety-critical systems.
• BS/MS/PhD in CS, EE, Robotics, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with autonomy stack interfaces (perception, localization, prediction, planning).
• Experience optimizing ML models for high-performance embedded compute platforms for robotics (e.g., NVIDIA Jetson, DRIVE, or similar).
• Experience in CUDA development, including implementing CUDA kernels for training and inference pipelines.
• Experience with MLOps: data pipelines, large-scale training/validation, dataset health, and long-tail mining.
• Strong foundations in robotics, including sensor calibration and state estimation.
• Publications in top-tier robotics or computer vision conferences (e.g., CVPR, ICCV, RSS, CoRL).

Additional Information

Life at Grab

We care about your well-being at Grab, here are some of the global benefits we offer:

• We have your back with Term Life Insurance and comprehensive Medical Insurance.
• With GrabFlex, create a benefits package that suits your needs and aspirations.
• Celebrate moments that matter in life with loved ones through Parental and Birthday leave, and give back to your communities through Love-all-Serve-all (LASA) volunteering leave
• We have a confidential Grabber Assistance Programme to guide and uplift you and your loved ones through life's challenges.
• Balancing personal commitments and life's demands are made easier with our FlexWork arrangements such as differentiated hours

What We Stand For at Grab

We are committed to building an inclusive and equitable workplace that enables diverse Grabbers to grow and perform at their best. As an equal opportunity employer, we consider all candidates fairly and equally regardless of nationality, ethnicity, religion, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, family commitments, physical and mental impairments or disabilities, and other attributes that make them unique.