---
title: 'Principal Software Engineer, Onboard Infrastructure at Nuro'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/principal-software-engineer-onboard-infrastructure-nuro-mountain-view-mgfdbsnge0ac'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Principal Software Engineer, Onboard Infrastructure at Nuro

- **Company:** Nuro
- **Location:** Mountain View, CA
- **Posted:** 2026-06-01
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://nuro.ai/careersitem?gh_jid=7974966

## Job description

## Who We Are

Nuro believes self-driving vehicles are the most immediate and profound opportunity for AI to drive positive change in the physical world. Safer streets, more time for what matters, and easier access to the world around us, that’s why we’re building a universal autonomy platform: self-driving for all roads and all rides.

Founded in 2016, Nuro is a physical AI company developing Level 4 autonomous driving technology for a wide range of vehicles, use cases, and markets. Powered by the Nuro Driver™, our universal autonomy platform enables the global mobility ecosystem to deploy autonomy at scale, from robotaxis and logistics fleets to personal vehicles.

With years of real-world deployment experience and a flexible, partner-led business model, Nuro is working toward a future where millions of autonomous vehicles powered by our technology help make everyday life safer, easier, and more connected.

Nuro has raised over $2B in capital from Uber, NVIDIA, Google, Softbank, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, and other leading investors.

## About the Role

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will help define and build the high-performance, highly reliable foundation of the Nuro Driver. This role spans Device Platform, Performance, and Onboard Systems, requiring deep technical leadership across sensor and compute integration, onboard runtime systems, distributed execution, and autonomy software performance.

You will architect hardware-agnostic device interfaces, inter-device communication pipelines, runtime APIs, and onboard software platforms that enable Nuro’s autonomy stack to run safely and efficiently across current and future vehicle platforms. You will also lead system-wide performance and reliability efforts, including latency reduction, resource efficiency, observability, automated validation, and tooling for debugging complex onboard systems.

This is a highly cross-functional and high-impact role. You will partner with autonomy, hardware, safety, validation, operations, and supplier-facing teams to integrate next-generation sensors and compute platforms, resolve reliability and performance issues, and shape the long-term technical direction of Nuro’s onboard infrastructure. We are looking for a technical leader who can operate across team boundaries, align multiple stakeholders, mentor engineers, and deliver robust systems for safety-critical autonomous vehicles.

## About the Work

- Define and drive technical direction for Nuro’s onboard infrastructure across Device Platform, Performance, and Onboard Systems.
- Architect core onboard systems for embedded compute, sensor integration, runtime frameworks, inter-device communication, and distributed execution across current and future vehicle platforms.
- Lead system-level performance and reliability efforts, including latency reduction, resource efficiency, memory management, thread/process lifecycle management, observability, automated testing, and continuous validation.
- Build foundational libraries, APIs, tools, and frameworks that enable autonomy and infrastructure teams to develop reliable, low-latency, high-performance software.
- Develop onboard distributed systems, including high-performance communication between compute nodes, module orchestration, monitoring, logging, diagnostics, and large-scale autonomy/sensor data pipelines.
- Diagnose complex, hard-to-reproduce failures across software, hardware, sensors, compute, networking, and autonomy workloads; drive root cause, mitigation, and long-term prevention.
- Partner with autonomy, hardware, safety, validation, operations, and suppliers to define requirements, evaluate and integrate next-generation platforms, and ensure safe, reliable deployment.
- Translate ambiguous product, safety, and autonomy needs into scalable technical architecture; align teams on design direction, execution plans, interfaces, and long-term platform strategy.
- Mentor engineers, establish engineering best practices, and raise the technical bar across Onboard Infrastructure and partner teams.

## About You

- Master’s degree or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Robotics, or related field.
- 8+ years of software engineering experience building production-quality systems software.
- 5+ years of technical leadership experience, including leading complex projects, setting technical direction, and driving cross-team alignment.
- Strong proficiency in modern C++, with deep experience in concurrency, multi-threading, debugging, memory management, and performance optimization.
- Experience building reliable, high-performance software for robotics, embedded systems, autonomous systems, distributed systems, or other performance-critical platforms.
- Strong systems-level expertise, with the ability to reason across operating systems, device interfaces, runtime frameworks, and application-level workloads.
- Proven ability to diagnose complex performance, reliability, concurrency, and hardware/software integration issues.
- Ability to translate ambiguous requirements into scalable architecture and mentor engineers through design and execution.

Bonus Points

- Master’s degree or PhD in CS, EE, Computer Engineering, Robotics, or a related field.
- Experience with robotics hardware, sensors, embedded compute platforms, or autonomous vehicle systems.
- Deep knowledge of Linux, device drivers, computer architecture, kernel behavior, and communication protocols such as Ethernet, PCIe, USB, SPI, I2C, or UART.
- Experience with high-performance communication, IPC, networking stacks, logging, monitoring, diagnostics, or data collection systems.
- Experience with GPU programming, NVIDIA platforms, CUDA, image processing, machine learning infrastructure, or accelerated compute.
- Experience working with hardware suppliers or integrating next-generation sensor and compute platforms.

At Nuro, your base pay is one part of your total compensation package. For this position, the reasonably expected base pay range is between $258,000 and $387,000 for the level at which this job has been scoped. Your base pay will depend on several factors, including your experience, qualifications, education, location, and skills. In the event that you are considered for a different level, a higher or lower pay range would apply. This position is also eligible for an annual performance bonus, equity, and a competitive benefits package.

At Nuro, we celebrate differences and are committed to a diverse workplace that fosters inclusion and psychological safety for all employees. Nuro is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and expressly prohibits any form of workplace discrimination based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristics.

## About Nuro

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Nuro develops a universal autonomy platform, licensing its AI-first self-driving system (the Nuro Driver) to automakers and mobility providers to power robotaxis, commercial fleets, and personal vehicles.
- **Entity Type**: Private
- **Headquarters**: Mountain View, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2016
- **Founders**: Jiajun Zhu (Co-Founder & Co-CEO) and Dave Ferguson (Co-Founder & Co-CEO)

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: Autonomous driving technology, robotics, mobility solutions
- Target customers (B2B, B2C, Enterprise, SMB, etc.): B2B – automakers and mobility platforms (e.g., Uber, Lucid)
- Mission or purpose statement: "To make autonomy accessible to all."

## Products & Services
- **[Nuro Driver™]**: An AI-first, vehicle-agnostic self-driving system comprising proprietary hardware and generalized self-driving software. It is designed to be cost-efficient and scalable across various vehicle platforms (robotaxis, commercial fleets, personal vehicles). Validated with 5+ years of driverless deployments and over 1.7 million autonomous miles with zero at-fault incidents. [nuro.ai](https://www.nuro.ai/technology)
- **[Nuro Toolkit]**: A customizable SDK offering industry-leading autonomy developer tools, infrastructure, and remote assistance, enabling partners to integrate and manage Nuro’s autonomy technology. [nuro.ai](https://www.nuro.ai/technology)
- **Universal Autonomy Platform**: The overarching platform that combines the Nuro Driver and Nuro Toolkit, designed to be licensed by automakers and mobility providers to scale autonomy responsibly. [nuro.ai](https://www.nuro.ai/)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed (private company).
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of over $2.1 billion (as of its Series D in 2021).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Investors include SoftBank Vision Fund, Greylock, Gaorong Capital, and others. Partners include Uber, Lucid Motors, and various auto and mobility companies. [nuro.ai](https://www.nuro.ai/)
- **Growth Signals**: The company has successfully deployed its technology across three US states (California, Texas, Nevada) since 2020. It is expanding globally with offices in Shenzhen, Tokyo, Toronto, and a planned office in Munich. It recently announced a collaboration with Uber and Lucid, signaling a move into the ride-hailing and personal vehicle markets. [nuro.ai](https://www.nuro.ai/)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Proven Safety Record**: Over 1.7 million autonomous miles driven with zero at-fault incidents, backed by industry-first operating permits and exemptions from regulators. [nuro.ai](https://www.nuro.ai/technology)
- **Vehicle-Agnostic Platform**: The Nuro Driver is designed to be adaptable across different vehicle platforms, making it a flexible solution for various partners.
- **Founding Team from Waymo/Google**: Both co-founders were key engineers on Google’s self-driving car project (now Waymo), bringing deep expertise in perception, machine learning, and robotics.
- **Vision for Artificial General Robotics (AGR)**: The company’s long-term vision extends beyond autonomous driving to applying its AI infrastructure and tooling to other physical domains, positioning it as a broader robotics platform.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scaling Autonomy through Partnerships**: Moving from its initial focus on last-mile delivery to licensing its technology to major mobility and automotive partners (e.g., Uber, Lucid) to power robotaxis and personal vehicles.
- **Global Expansion**: Establishing engineering and operational offices in key markets (US, China, Japan, Canada, Germany) to support global deployment.
- **Cost-Efficient, Scalable AI**: Developing a hardware and software stack that uses automotive-grade, cost-efficient components to enable mass-market adoption.

## Why Work Here
- **Impactful Mission**: Employees work on technology that directly aims to make streets safer, reduce emissions, and give people more time.
- **World-Class Team & Culture**: The company emphasizes a culture of "One team," "Find a way," and "1% better every day," with a focus on continuous improvement and collaboration. [nuro.ai](https://www.nuro.ai/careers)
- **Strong Benefits Package**: Includes medical, dental, and vision coverage, fertility benefits, parental leave, flexible PTO, mental health and physical fitness benefits, 401k, and RSUs (equity). [nuro.ai](https://www.nuro.ai/careers)
- **Global & Diverse Work Environment**: Offices in Mountain View (HQ), San Francisco, Santa Clara, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Shenzhen, Tokyo, Toronto, and a planned office in Munich. The company is committed to DEI. [nuro.ai](https://www.nuro.ai/careers)
- **Early Career & Internship Programs**: Offers structured programs for students and early-career professionals to work on real products and make a measurable impact. [nuro.ai](https://www.nuro.ai/careers)

## Sources
1. [nuro.ai - Company Page](https://www.nuro.ai/company)
2. [nuro.ai - Homepage](https://www.nuro.ai/)
3. [nuro.ai - Technology Page](https://www.nuro.ai/technology)
4. [nuro.ai - Careers Page](https://www.nuro.ai/careers)
5. [LinkedIn - Nuro](https://www.linkedin.com/company/nuro-inc.)

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