---
title: 'Staff Electrical Engineer (Sensors & Imaging Systems) at Rhoda AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-electrical-engineer-sensors-imaging-systems-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-0ndr5emsy5c6'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Staff Electrical Engineer (Sensors & Imaging Systems) at Rhoda AI

- **Company:** Rhoda AI
- **Location:** Mountain View, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-05-26
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/rhoda-ai/6412a88a-49c2-4db5-94f0-243847aa5cf5/application

**Skills:** CMOS image sensors, Camera systems, Optics fundamentals, Image Signal Processing (ISP), MIPI CSI-2, D-PHY, C-PHY, Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensors, mmWave radar, Thermal cameras, LiDAR, Analog and digital design, Schematic capture, PCB layout review, Power delivery, Signal integrity, Oscilloscopes, Logic analyzers, Spectrum analyzers, EVT

> Lead the architecture and design of advanced multi-sensor imaging and perception systems for generalist robots. This senior individual-contributor role involves sensor selection, signal chain ownership, and cross-functional collaboration to drive products from concept to mass production.

## Job description

At Rhoda AI, we’re building the next generation of generalist intelligent robots. We own the full robotics stack from high-performance hardware and robot systems to the infrastructure and state-of-the-art foundation world models that control our robots. Our robots are designed to be generalists capable of operating in complex, real-world environments and handling long-tail edge cases, made possible by our cutting edge research and end-to-end system design. We've raised over $450M and are investing aggressively in model research, infrastructure, hardware development, and manufacturing scale-up to make generalist robotics a reality.

We are seeking a Staff or Principal Member of Technical Staff (MTS) – Electrical to lead the architecture, design, and technical execution of advanced multi-sensor imaging and perception systems. This is a senior individual-contributor role for an electrical engineer with deep, hands-on expertise across camera and imaging pipelines, depth and ranging sensors (ToF, Radar, LiDAR), thermal imaging, and the surrounding electrical and signal-integrity considerations that make these systems work in production.

The successful candidate will set the technical direction for sensor selection, integration, and validation; partner closely with optics, mechanical, firmware, ML, and systems teams; and serve as a recognized technical authority across the organization. This role is ideal for an engineer who has taken multiple sensor-driven products from concept to volume production and is energized by solving hard, cross-disciplinary problems.

## KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

- Architect end-to-end imaging and sensing subsystems, including camera selection, optics interface, illumination, and electrical integration, to meet product-level performance, power, and cost targets.
- Drive camera and sensor selection across CMOS image sensors, ToF, mmWave radar, LiDAR, and thermal modules — evaluating resolution, FOV, sensitivity, dynamic range, frame rate, latency, and SWaP (size, weight, and power).
- Own the camera signal chain, including ISP tuning and configuration, RAW/RGB pipelines, MIPI CSI-2 / parallel RGB interfaces, and characterization across lighting, temperature, and motion conditions.
- Lead sensor fusion hardware design combining cameras, depth sensors, radar, and LiDAR for perception and object-detection workloads.
- Define lighting and illumination strategies for active and passive imaging, including IR illuminators, structured light, and synchronized strobe designs.
- Specify and review schematics, layouts, and BOMs for sensor boards, flex cables, connectors, and power-delivery networks; ensure signal-integrity and EMI/EMC compliance for high-speed interfaces.
- Develop characterization and validation plans with lab measurements (oscilloscope, spectrum analyzer, optical bench) and statistical bring-up/qualification methodologies.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with firmware/embedded, computer-vision/ML, mechanical, optical, and manufacturing engineering to drive designs from prototype through DVT, PVT, and mass production.
- Mentor and influence engineers across the org; review designs, set best practices, and represent electrical engineering in architectural decisions.
- Engage with external vendors and partners (sensor suppliers, module houses, ODMs) to evaluate roadmaps, negotiate specs, and resolve technical issues.

## REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

## EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE

- B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Applied Physics, or a related field.
- Staff level: 10+ years of relevant industry experience designing electrical/sensor subsystems for shipping products.
- Principal level: 15+ years with a demonstrated track record of leading the technical direction of multiple high-volume sensor-based products.

## CAMERAS & IMAGING

- Deep, hands-on knowledge of CMOS image sensors and end-to-end camera systems, including the trade-offs that drive camera selection (resolution, pixel size, QE, SNR, HDR, rolling vs. global shutter).
- Strong understanding of optics fundamentals — Field of View (FOV), focal length, F-number, depth of field, distortion, and lens/sensor matching.
- Image Signal Processing (ISP): demosaic, AE/AWB/AF, denoise, tone-mapping, color correction, lens shading, and ISP tuning for target use cases.
- Camera interfaces: MIPI CSI-2 / D-PHY / C-PHY, parallel RGB, and RAW pipelines — including timing, lane allocation, signal integrity, and bring-up.
- Experience designing illumination / lighting subsystems for cameras (visible, IR, NIR, synchronized strobes).

## DEPTH, RANGING & PERCEPTION SENSORS

- Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensors: iToF and dToF principles, modulation schemes, multipath and ambient-light mitigation, depth accuracy characterization.
- mmWave radar for object detection: FMCW radar fundamentals, antenna arrays, range/Doppler/angle estimation, and integration of radar modules at the board and system level.
- Thermal cameras: microbolometer-based LWIR sensors, NUC, thermal calibration, and integration trade-offs.
- LiDAR: working knowledge of mechanical, MEMS, and solid-state LiDAR architectures and their electrical/interface requirements.

## CORE ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

- Strong fundamentals in analog and digital design, schematic capture, PCB layout review, power delivery, and signal integrity for high-speed interfaces.
- Hands-on lab debug skills: oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, spectrum analyzers, optical/imaging test equipment.
- Experience taking products through EVT → DVT → PVT → MP and resolving production issues.
- Excellent written and verbal communication; able to drive alignment across hardware, firmware, ML, and product stakeholders.

## PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS (NICE-TO-HAVE)

- NVIDIA platform experience — Jetson (Orin, Xavier), DRIVE, or other NVIDIA SoC/GPU platforms used for camera and perception workloads.
- Other high-end GPU / accelerator exposure — Qualcomm, Ambarella, AMD, or comparable platforms for vision and AI inference at the edge.
- FPGA exposure — familiarity with FPGA-based sensor interfacing, bridging, and prototyping (Xilinx/AMD, Intel/Altera, Lattice). Embedded HDL coding is not required; an architectural and integration-level understanding is sufficient.
- Acoustic & audio hardware — experience with MEMS microphones, microphone arrays, 3D acoustic field capture / beamforming, and audio front-end design.
- Speaker driver / amplifier design — Class-D amplifiers, transducer selection, and audio output subsystem integration.
- Experience with sensor fusion software stacks, ROS, or working closely with computer-vision / ML teams.
- Published work, patents, or conference contributions in imaging, sensing, or perception.

## WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

- Within 6 months: become the go-to technical authority for sensor and imaging subsystems; deliver a clear technical roadmap for the imaging stack.
- Within 12 months: lead the electrical architecture of at least one major sensor-driven product or platform release.
- Ongoing: raise the engineering bar through design reviews, mentorship, and reusable architectures that scale across product lines.

## About Rhoda AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Rhoda AI builds robot foundation models that learn from internet-scale video to enable manipulation-capable robots to generalize in real-world industrial environments.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed + Series A; $680M total funding)
- **Headquarters**: Palo Alto, CA, United States
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Jagdeep Singh (CEO), Eric Chan (Chief Scientist), Changan Chen (Chief Research Officer), Andrew Wooten, Gordon Wetzstein (Scientific Advisor) [rhoda.ai/team](https://www.rhoda.ai/team)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Hardware
- **Target customers**: B2B – industrial enterprises in automotive, manufacturing, logistics, and e-commerce
- **Mission/purpose**: “Building at the frontier of embodied intelligence” and “Designing intelligence for the real world” – deploying general-purpose robot foundation models that adapt to the variability of commercial and industrial environments. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/) | [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai)

## Products & Services
- **Rhoda Robot Platform (Hardware + Software)**: A turnkey robotic system with custom actuators (25kg rated, 40kg peak payload), safety-rated vision, wheel-base, and brakes in every actuator. The platform runs the **Direct Video Action** model, which pre-trains on over a million real-world videos and post-trains on task-specific robot data. Long-context windows enable single-shot learning from human demonstrations without retraining. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)
- **FutureVision Intelligence Layer**: A proprietary architecture that handles real-world industrial tasks autonomously by generalizing beyond conventional VLA pipelines. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)
- **Deployment Services**: End-to-end solutions for tasks such as returns processing, bearing decanting, container breakdown, and material transport in logistics and e-commerce facilities. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding **$680M** – Seed round $67.4M (April 2024), Series A $162.6M (April 2025), and Series A $450M (March 2026) with 4 investors. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not individually named in available sources; partners include customers in automotive, manufacturing, logistics, and e-commerce. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount growth of **+20% monthly** (LinkedIn reports 55 employees; Built In reports 73 employees – conflicting data). Talent sourced from companies like QuantumScape, Flexiv Robotics, Scale AI, Google, Meta, NVIDIA, and Stanford University. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai) | [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/rhoda-ai)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Direct Video Action architecture** with web-scale video pre-training gives a strong prior on motion, physics, and dynamics, enabling generalization beyond lab settings.
- **Custom high-performance actuators** (25kg rated, 40kg peak) with safety-rated brakes and vision – designed for 3+ years of continuous operation at rated payload.
- **Long-context in-context learning** allows the robot to perform tasks single-shot from human demonstrations without retraining.
- **Turnkey industrial deployments** that handle ambiguity and variability (e.g., debris, transparent bags, heavy boxes) – tasks customers initially believed could not be automated. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling robot intelligence through a pre-training/post-training paradigm, moving from controlled labs to reliable production environments.
- Expanding commercial deployments across automotive, manufacturing, logistics, and e-commerce verticals.
- Pursuing a path to **physical AGI** by combining foundation models with custom hardware for real-world adaptability. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “Building at the frontier of embodied intelligence” – emphasis on hard problems, first-principles thinking, and category-defining systems. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai)
- **Work policy**: Hybrid workspace (employees combine remote and on-site work), with offices in Mountain View and Palo Alto, CA. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/rhoda-ai)
- **Engineering culture**: Strong research focus (Chief Research Officer, Chief Scientist, many research engineers/scientists). Recent job postings include Research Scientist, Robot Perception Engineer, Mechanical Engineer, Fullstack Engineer, and Product Manager. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/rhoda-ai)
- **Notable perks**: Not explicitly listed, but the company is well-funded ($680M) and at an early stage (founded 2024), offering significant growth opportunity and impact.

## Sources
1. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/) – Company website (product, technology, commercial applications)
2. [rhoda.ai/careers](https://www.rhoda.ai/careers) – Careers page
3. [rhoda.ai/team](https://www.rhoda.ai/team) – Leadership team and co-founders
4. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/rhoda-ai) – Built In profile (employee count, offices, job listings, hybrid policy)
5. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai) – LinkedIn company page (funding, headcount, executive list, talent sources)

## Other roles at Rhoda AI

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