---
title: 'Senior Machine Learning Engineer - Perception at Pickle Robot Company'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-machine-learning-engineer-perception-pickle-robot-company-charlestown-b1hjmfz0hvfm'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-19'
---

# Senior Machine Learning Engineer - Perception at Pickle Robot Company

- **Company:** Pickle Robot Company
- **Location:** Charlestown, MA
- **Compensation:** $170k–$227k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-10-13
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-19
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/picklerobot/403803e1-68a0-4225-b657-a46e72b64d73

## Job description

## About Us

At Pickle Robot, we're on a mission to automate global supply chains with Physical AI. Our robots work alongside warehouse teams to unload trucks and containers — one of the toughest, most understaffed jobs in logistics — making the work safer, faster, and more efficient for the people doing it.  Loading trucks comes next, followed by the Dill Autonomy Engine: generalized autonomy that will eventually orchestrate robots across entire logistics processes.

We're looking for a rigorous and self-directed Senior Machine Learning Engineer to own machine learning problems end-to-end on the systems that decide how our robots grasp packages. This role will focus on problem formulation, building the data engines that feed our models, training and experimentation, and the evaluation rigor that tells us whether a model is genuinely better. Our platform and robotics engineers own runtime integration and edge deployment, so you can stay focused on the modeling loop.

## What You'll Do

- Own ML Problem Formulation: You will turn ambiguous picking performance goals into well-posed ML problems, deciding what the model predicts, how labels and rewards are defined, what loss to optimize, and what "better" actually means. This is the core of the role.

- Build the Data Engine: You will own dataset strategy end-to-end, from large-scale synthetic scene generation and distributed cloud dataset jobs to scene diversity filtering and self-supervised label generation. You will identify when the data, rather than the model, is the bottleneck, and fix it.

- Train and Iterate on Large Vision Models: You will fine-tune large backbones with multiple task-specific heads, run disciplined experiments, and know both which experiment to run next and when to stop.

- Own Evaluation and Verification: You will define offline metrics that predict on-robot outcomes and online metrics that help you improve performance on edge cases.

- Drive Technical Excellence: As a senior member of the team, you will conduct rigorous code reviews, mentor engineers earlier in their careers, and contribute to the perception and grasping roadmap.

- Hand Off Cleanly to Production: You will produce deployable models with sane latency budgets, exportable graphs, and reproducible artifacts, partnering with the engineers who own runtime integration and inference optimization rather than owning that yourself.

## What You'll Bring

- 5+ Years of Experience in Machine Learning and Computer Vision, including models you personally carried from problem statement to measured outcome.

- A track record of framing problems. You can translate high-level product requirements into specific engineering tasks and explain technical trade-offs to non-expert stakeholders.

- Hands-on Experience Building Datasets at Scale: generation or collection, curation, automated quality assurance, coverage and bias analysis, and active learning to systematically close edge cases.

- Rigorous Evaluation Habits: baselines, ablations, metric design, and a clear sense of when a result is real.

- Expert-level Python and PyTorch skills.

- Comfortable with cloud training infrastructure (GCP or AWS), Docker, and experiment tracking tools.

- Professional experience with at least one of the following:

- Developing and training multi-task models

- Developing and training multi-modal models

- Developing and training multi–view models

- Self-supervised, outcome-based, or reward-driven learning.

Pay at Pickle At Pickle Robot Company, we believe transparency builds trust. The salary range listed here is provided in accordance with Massachusetts law and reflects what we reasonably and in good faith expect to offer for this role. We often consider candidates at different levels of seniority, and final compensation will reflect the level at which a candidate is hired, along with factors like experience and location.

Pickle Perks Pickle provides best-in-class benefits, including health, dental, and vision insurance; unlimited vacation; paid federal and state holidays; 401(k) contributions of 5% of your salary; company-covered travel expenses; and other perks to make your working life more fun, comfortable, and productive.

## About Pickle Robot Company

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Pickle Robot builds physical AI–powered robots that automate the unloading of trucks, trailers, and shipping containers in warehouse and supply chain operations.
- **Entity Type**: Private (VC-backed, Series B — 6 funding rounds, ~$102.5M total raised)
- **Headquarters**: Charlestown, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- **Founded**: 2018
- **Founders**: Founded by a team of MIT alumni, including AJ Lonska (CEO) and Ariana "Ari" Eisenstein (CTO) — both MIT engineering graduates. [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/careers) [linkedin.com](https://ae.linkedin.com/company/pickle-robot-company)

## Core Business
- **Primary Industry**: Supply chain automation / warehouse robotics / Physical AI
- **Target Customers**: B2B, Enterprise — warehouse operators, inbound logistics teams, distribution centers, and import container facilities
- **Mission**: To automate global supply chains and "make the future of work better for warehouse workers" — putting machines to work on heavy lifting while people focus on problem-solving. [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/company)

## Products & Services
- **Pickle Robot (Truck Unloading System)**: An industrial robotics system that autonomously unloads non-palletized goods from trailers and containers in as little as 90 minutes. Integrates with existing warehouse operations and is designed to be deployed in days rather than months. [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/)
- **Dill Autonomy Engine (DAE)**: The proprietary "brain" of every Pickle robot — combines classical optimal control with generative AI, machine vision, and continuous fleet learning. Each robot's picks generate learnings that make every other robot in the fleet smarter over time. [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/)
- **Generative AI + Machine Vision**: Fine-tunes pre-trained foundation models for logistics-specific tasks, paired with multi-camera, real-time vision systems that evaluate countless pick and path options in milliseconds. [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/)
- **Operational Dashboards**: Captures and surfaces real-time performance data — picks per hour, unload times, package mix — for warehouse and inbound supervisors, configurable for single robots, site fleets, or multi-site fleets. [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric (Private)**: Total funding — USD $102,450,000 across 6 rounds; Annual revenue estimated at ~$3M. [linkedin.com](https://ae.linkedin.com/company/pickle-robot-company)
- **Notable Funding Rounds**: $50M Series B (Nov 2024, 7 investors), $15M Series B tranche (May 2024), $3.7M Seed led by Hyperplane (2019), $2M Seed (2020), and a Corporate Round led by Ranpak (2021). [linkedin.com](https://ae.linkedin.com/company/pickle-robot-company)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Hyperplane (lead seed investor), Ranpak (corporate investor), Celonis (process intelligence partner). [linkedin.com](https://ae.linkedin.com/company/pickle-robot-company) [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/)
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew 46.2% YoY (+42 people to 113 employees); LinkedIn followers grew 122.2% yearly to ~20.5K; 16 active job postings at time of research; robots generating "millions of real-world picks." [linkedin.com](https://ae.linkedin.com/company/pickle-robot-company) [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Physical AI approach**: Combines large foundation models, generative AI, and transformer architectures with industrial robotics — a differentiated technical approach versus traditional automation players. [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/company)
- **Fleet-wide learning flywheel**: Every robot's real-world picks train the Dill Autonomy Engine, making each unit faster and smarter and compounding system value across the fleet. [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/)
- **Narrow, hard-problem focus**: Obsessively focused on the dock-door truck unloading problem — a chaotic, high-variability task that's painful for humans and historically difficult to automate. [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/company)
- **MIT-rooted talent pipeline**: Leadership and engineering deeply connected to MIT; strong talent pull from top robotics firms (Berkshire Grey, Amazon Fulfillment Technologies & Robotics, Formlabs, Verve Motion, 6 River Systems). [linkedin.com](https://ae.linkedin.com/company/pickle-robot-company)
- **Working in the real world**: Proven deployments operating in live warehouse environments at "human-scale or better" performance, rather than just lab demos. [linkedin.com](https://ae.linkedin.com/company/pickle-robot-company)

## Strategic Focus
- **Commercializing Physical AI at scale**: Scaling truck unloading automation as the beachhead, with an explicit roadmap to "generalized autonomy" that can orchestrate robots across entire logistics processes. [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/company)
- **Deepening the Dill Autonomy Engine**: Investing in generative AI, fine-tuned logistics-specific models, and continuous learning to improve speed and reliability with every deployment. [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/)
- **Operational integration**: Partnering with process-intelligence platforms like Celonis to tie robot performance directly to logistics KPIs and broader network outcomes. [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/)
- **Expanding fleet management**: Building dashboards and configurable monitoring across single robots, site-level fleets, and multi-site networks to sell enterprise-scale automation programs. [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/)

## Why Work Here
- **High-growth, VC-backed environment**: Get in on the "ground floor of a fast growing, VC backed, warehouse automation company" with meaningful equity included in compensation packages. [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/careers) [jobs.lever.co](https://jobs.lever.co/picklerobot)
- **Hard technical problems**: Engineers work on computer vision, mechanical engineering, reinforcement learning, generative AI, and real-time robotics systems — with the freedom to make decisions without "this is how it's always been done" constraints. [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/careers)
- **Highly technical, collaborative culture**: Team of ~113 with a heavily technical workforce (75 people in technical/engineering roles); ex-MIT culture described as "seriously motivated, collaborative, and fun." [linkedin.com](https://ae.linkedin.com/company/pickle-robot-company) [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/careers)
- **Mission-driven work**: The company's stated goal is a working world where "machines do the heavy lifting and people do the problem solving" — directly improving the daily lives of warehouse workers. [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/)
- **Location and perks**: HQ in a "beautiful building in the heart of Charlestown, MA," with offices in Boston and Cambridge, plus an office in the UK; benefits include healthcare, 401k, snacks, cold brew, and competitive pay with equity. [picklerobot.com](https://www.picklerobot.com/careers) [linkedin.com](https://ae.linkedin.com/company/pickle-robot-company)
- **Active and diverse hiring**: 16 open roles spanning Backend Software Engineering, Machine Learning, Perception, Electrical Engineering, Motion Planning Software, Product Management, and Robotic Operations Support. [jobs.lever.co](https://jobs.lever.co/picklerobot) [linkedin.com](https://ae.linkedin.com/company/pickle-robot-company)

## Sources
1. [picklerobot.com — About Us / Company](https://www.picklerobot.com/company)
2. [picklerobot.com — Homepage / Product](https://www.picklerobot.com/)
3. [picklerobot.com — Careers](https://www.picklerobot.com/careers)
4. [jobs.lever.co — Pickle Robot Openings](https://jobs.lever.co/picklerobot)
5. [linkedin.com — P

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