Software Engineer Contract Jobs in Santa Rosa, CA

Hadrian is building autonomous factories to reindustrialize America. By combining AI, advanced software, robotics, and full-stack manufacturing, we help aerospace and defense companies build rockets, satellites, aircraft, ships, and other mission-critical systems up to 10x faster and at significantly lower cost.

Following our $1.37B Series D at a $7.87B valuation, Hadrian is rapidly expanding our manufacturing footprint, launching new capabilities across welding, casting, forging, electronics, additive manufacturing, and more, while scaling our Factory-as-a-Service platform to transform how critical products are built.

Backed by leading investors including JPMorgan Chase, Valor Equity Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, 137 Ventures, Lux Capital, T. Rowe Price, and Morgan Stanley, we’re building the future of American manufacturing—and looking for exceptional people to help make it happen.

If you’re ready to take on the most challenging and rewarding work of your career while helping create American manufacturing jobs for generations to come, you’re exactly who we’re looking for.

The Role

The Autonomous Factory Systems team builds the software that gives Hadrian's factories the ability to sense, decide, and act autonomously. This includes the core robotics stack — perception, behaviors, planning, collision avoidance, and high-level control — alongside orchestration between robots and manufacturing machines and the hardware abstraction layer that connects our software to the machines on the floor.

Perception is central to the future of autonomous systems in the factory. In this role will lead the technical direction of the Autonomous Factory Systems organization’s Perception team. You will be — defining the technical roadmap, shaping the architecture, and driving the work that will meaningfully expand what our robots can sense, understand, and act on. This is a deeply hands-on role for someone who brings sharp technical depth and the experience to drive alignment across teams working at the cutting edge of industrial robotics.

What You’ll Do

• Define and drive the multi-year technical roadmap for the Perception Team; align perception capabilities with the broader Autonomous Factory Systems strategy and surface upstream dependencies and risks early

• Lead architecture of the full perception pipeline — object detection and tracking, semantic and instance segmentation, 6-DoF pose estimation, and scene understanding — designed for the reliability and throughput demands of industrial environments

• Define the integration surface between perception and adjacent systems (motion planning, manipulation, control, simulation); establish clear, well-documented contracts that downstream teams can build against with confidence

• Drive sensor fusion strategy across LiDAR, structured light, RGB, and depth cameras; collaborate with hardware teams on sensor selection and calibration pipelines

• Establish rigorous practices for the team: data collection and labeling pipelines, model training and evaluation workflows, deployment practices, and validation criteria across simulation and real-world environments

• Raise the technical bar in hiring — define role requirements, conduct technical interviews, and assess candidates with the domain depth the field demands; mentor engineers across levels on perception fundamentals and engineering craft

• Represent perception in cross-functional design reviews and planning; engage with hardware vendors and research collaborators where relevant

• Continuously evaluate state-of-the-art research; make deliberate, justified decisions about when and how to incorporate advances into production systems

What We’re Looking For

• 10+ years of software engineering in computer vision, robotics perception, or autonomous systems, with a track record of technical leadership at Staff or Principal level (or equivalent scope)

• Expert-level command of 3D computer vision: point cloud processing, depth estimation, stereo and structured light systems, multi-view geometry, and/or LiDAR-based algorithms in production

• Strong machine learning foundations — model architecture, training infrastructure, and production deployment — with the judgment to know when and how to apply learned approaches versus classical methods

• Experience in manufacturing, logistics, or other applied robotics environments — familiarity with the reliability and safety constraints that production deployment demands beyond the lab

• Experience building and deploying real-time perception systems under hard latency and reliability constraints

• Strong proficiency in C++ and Python; demonstrated ability to write production-quality code and hold a high bar in technical review

• Proven ability to define architecture across a domain, make and communicate high-stakes technical decisions, and build alignment across teams and organizational boundaries

• Experience contributing meaningfully to technical hiring — defining role requirements, evaluating candidates, and helping raise team caliber over time

What Will Set You Apart

• M.S. or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Robotics, or a related field with a concentration in computer vision, machine learning, or perception

• Hands-on experience with sensor fusion techniques including multi-modal calibration, temporal alignment, and uncertainty quantification across sensor modalities

• Familiarity with model optimization for edge deployment — quantization, distillation, TensorRT, or equivalent

• Publications, patents, or significant open-source contributions in computer vision, robotics perception, or machine learning

Compensation

For this role, the target salary range is $240,000 - $299,000 (actual range may vary based on experience).

This is the lowest to highest salary we reasonably and in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range, and the range may be modified in the future. An employee's pay position within the salary range will be based on several factors, including, but not limited to, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, performance, and business or organizational needs.

• Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance plans for employees

• 401k

• Relocation support may be provided for certain situations, based on business need.

• Flexible vacation policy

• Equity

To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.

Hadrian uses AI-assisted tools in our recruiting and hiring processes to help our team work more efficiently. This may include tools that help organize and analyze recruiting data, as well as an AI-powered notetaker that can record and transcribe interviews and help coordinate feedback. These tools support our team and are not used to make hiring decisions. All candidate evaluations and hiring decisions are performed by humans. If an interview will be recorded, you will be notified in advance and may opt out at any time with no impact on your candidacy. Candidate data processed through these tools is subject to the same protections described in our Privacy Policy.

Hadrian will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of all applicable laws. We do not ask about criminal history on our application, and we do not consider criminal history before making a conditional offer of employment.

It is the Company’s policy to provide equal employment opportunity for all applicants and employees. The Company does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race inclusive of traits historically associated with race (including, but not limited to, hair texture and protective hairstyles, such as braids, locks and twists), color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, national origin (including, in California, possession of a drivers license), ancestry, citizenship, age, physical or mental disability, height or weight, medical condition, family care status, military or veteran status, marital status, domestic partner status, sexual orientation, genetic information, exercise of reproductive rights, any other basis protected by local, state, or federal laws, or any combination of the above characteristics. When necessary, the Company also makes reasonable accommodations for disabled candidates and employees, including for candidates or employees who are disabled by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.