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Freight Train Engineer Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

Omnifold

Infrastructure Tech Lead

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$150 - $200/hr

We train a unique model for each customer, which means model training and inference work ... Emergency air freight is needed for misallocated products. Poor production planning means workers ...

Cambridge Systematics

Senior Planner

Los Angeles, CA · On-site

$155K - $175K/yr

They train, manage and mentor junior staff and motivate staff and subconsultants to deliver work ... Civil Engineering, Public Policy, Transportation Economics or related field * Freight and/or ...

OmniTRAX

Utility I

Santa Maria, CA · On-site

This position is also a cross functional role that is able to handle several key duties within the Transportation, Engineering & Mechanical Departments. This position oversees the train, freight and ...

Catalina Island Company

Director, Purchasing

Avalon, CA · On-site

  • Medical

  • Dental

  • Vision

  • Life

  • Retirement

  • PTO

The team continued to train on the island until 1951. In 1929, Wrigley built the iconic Catalina ... Coordinate purchasing and logistics around ferry, barge, marine freight, weather, seasonal demand ...

DB E.C.O. North America

$118K - $153K/yr

Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Transportation, Business Administration or similar (M.Sc ... Deep understanding of American freight railroad operations, capacity planning, and coordination ...

Ralliant

Transportation Clerk

Hollister, CA · On-site

$17.75 - $21.75/hr

Book and schedule freight forwarders. * Attend meetings with internal and external customers ... Effectively communicate with and train others on all job responsibilities. * Perform root cause ...

RailPros

$20 - $35/hr

  • Medical

  • Dental

  • Vision

  • Retirement

  • PTO

... with train dispatchers and engineers, ensuring work groups are clear of limits during train ... or Class II freight railroad * Employment is contingent upon the successful outcome of ...

RailPros

$20 - $35/hr

  • Medical

  • Dental

  • Vision

  • Retirement

  • PTO

... with train dispatchers and engineers, ensuring work groups are clear of limits during train ... or Class II freight railroad * Employment is contingent upon the successful outcome of ...

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Showing results 21-40

All JobsFreight Train Engineer JobsFreight Train Engineer Jobs in California

Freight Train Engineer information

See California salary details

$35K

$94.8K

$165.8K

How much do freight train engineer jobs pay per year?

As of Aug 15, 2026, the average yearly pay for freight train engineer in California is $94,849.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $79,000.00 and $106,600.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What are some typical challenges faced by freight train engineers on the job?

Freight Train Engineers often face challenges such as operating trains in various weather conditions, adhering to strict timetables, and responding quickly to equipment or track issues that arise en route. They must remain vigilant for unexpected obstacles or signals and comply with complex safety regulations at all times. Additionally, engineers frequently work irregular hours, including nights, weekends, and holidays, which can affect work-life balance. Despite these challenges, the role offers an engaging environment with strong teamwork and opportunities for advancement into supervisory or training positions.

What is a freight train engineer?

A Freight Train Engineer operates and controls freight trains, ensuring the safe and efficient transportation of goods. They monitor train speed, track signals, and mechanical systems while following safety regulations and schedules. Engineers communicate with dispatchers and rail yard personnel to coordinate movements and handle emergencies. This role requires extensive training, certification, and knowledge of rail systems, mechanical functions, and safety protocols.

How do you become a freight train engineer?

To become a freight train engineer, candidates typically need a high school diploma or equivalent, a valid driver's license, and completion of a formal training program provided by a railroad company or a technical school. They must also pass background checks, medical exams, and obtain certification from the Federal Railroad Administration, which includes passing written and practical tests. Experience operating trains or related machinery is often required before advancing to a full engineer role.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a freight train engineer, and why are they important?

To succeed as a Freight Train Engineer, you need strong mechanical aptitude, attention to detail, and a high school diploma or equivalent, often supplemented by a federally mandated locomotive engineer certification. Familiarity with train control systems, safety protocols, and electronic logging devices is essential for operating and navigating freight locomotives safely. Excellent situational awareness, clear communication, and the ability to remain calm under pressure are key soft skills in this role. These competencies ensure safe train operation, adherence to schedules, and effective responses to unexpected challenges on the rail.

What does a freight train engineer do on a freight train?

A freight train engineer operates and controls the locomotive to move freight cars along rail lines, ensuring safe and efficient transportation. They monitor gauges, signals, and track conditions, and may use tools like radios and control panels. The job requires attention to safety protocols, adherence to schedules, and often involves long hours and shift work.

What are the most commonly searched types of Freight Train Engineer jobs in California?

The most popular types of Freight Train Engineer jobs in California are:

What are popular job titles related to Freight Train Engineer jobs in California?

For Freight Train Engineer jobs in California, the most frequently searched job titles are:

What job categories do people searching Freight Train Engineer jobs in California look for?

The top searched job categories for Freight Train Engineer jobs in California are:

Freight Train Engineer jobs near you
Infographic showing various Freight Train Engineer job openings in California as of August 2026, with employment types broken down into 82% Full Time, 14% Part Time, 2% Temporary, 1% Contract, and 1% Nights. Highlights an 97% Physical, 1% Hybrid, and 2% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $94,849 per year, or $45.6 per hour.

Machine Learning Engineer: Perception

Bedrock Robotics

San Francisco, CA • On-site

Full-time

Re-posted 7 days ago

Job description

Join the team bringing advanced autonomy to the built world
At Bedrock, we're moving AI out of the lab and into the real world. Our team is composed of industry veterans who helped launch Waymo, scaled Segment to a $3.2B acquisition, and grew Uber Freight to $5B in revenue. Today, we're deploying autonomous systems on heavy construction machinery across the country, accelerating project schedules of billion-dollar infrastructure projects and improving safety on job sites. Backed by $350M in funding, we're working quickly to close the gap between America's surging demand for housing, data centers, manufacturing hubs, and the construction industry's growing labor shortage.
This is where algorithms meet steel-toed boots. You'll collaborate with construction veterans and world-class engineers to solve physical-world problems that simulations can't touch. If you're ready to apply cutting-edge technology to solve meaningful problems alongside a talented team-we'd love to have you join us.
Machine Learning Engineer: Perception
Bedrock is bringing autonomy to the construction industry! We're a group of veterans from the autonomous vehicle industry who are passionate about bringing the benefits of automation to areas in the construction industry currently underserved by the market.
We are looking for engineers with expertise in shipping production 3D perception systems at scale. Successful candidates have architected systems, trained models from scratch, understand the full stack (clustering, detection, classification, and tracking), and have shipped at scale. We use both computer vision and LIDAR-based approaches, so knowledge of either or both is key. Models are just part of the system: you understand data and have good intuition about why models fail. You know how to evaluate corner cases, manage or build data pipelines, use autolabels (or not), and have a strong understanding of statistical properties of these systems.
What You'll Do:
  • Design Early Fusion Architectures: Develop and train state-of-the-art models (e.g., BEV-based transformers) that fuse raw Lidar and Camera data to solve for object detection and semantic segmentation.
  • Tackle "Messy" Physics: Build perception systems robust enough to handle dynamic occlusion (seeing the robot's own arm/bucket), particulates (dust, snow, rain), and high-vibration conditions.
  • Deploy to the Edge: Optimize models for inference on embedded hardware. You will debug system-level issues, such as sensor calibration drift and latency bottlenecks.
  • Collaborating with other teams to create state-of-the-art representations for downstream use cases.

What we're looking for:
  • Production ML Experience: 3+ years of experience taking deep learning models from research to real-world production using PyTorch, Tensorflow, or JAX.
  • 3D Geometry & Calibration: You have a deep understanding of SE(3) transformations, homogeneous coordinates, and intrinsic/extrinsic sensor calibration. You understand the math required to project a 3D Lidar point onto a 2D image pixel accurately.
  • Early Fusion Expertise: Practical experience with architectures that fuse modalities at the feature level (e.g., BEVFusion, TransFuser, PointPainting) rather than just fusing final bounding boxes.
  • SOTA Object Detection experience with modern transformer-based architectures (DETR, PETR, etc...) including similar temporal models (PETRv2, StreamPETR, ...)
  • Systems Fluency: You are an expert in Python, but you are also comfortable reading and writing systems code in C++ or Rust. You understand memory management and real-time constraints.
  • Data Intuition: You understand that in robotics, better data alignment often beats a bigger model. You are willing to dig into the data infrastructure to ensure ground truth quality.

Ways to stand out:
  • Bonus: Voxel/Occupancy Experience: Experience working with occupancy grids, NeRFs, or voxel-based representations for terrain mapping.
  • Bonus: Top-Tier Research: Published work in conferences such as ICRA, IROS, CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, CoRL, or RSS

Our roles are often flexible. If you don't fit all the criteria, or are in another location (especially one where we have an office like SF or NY) please apply anyway! We'd love to consider you.

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