Senior Vehicle Integration Engineer

Kodiak•Mountain View, CA

15h

About The Position

Kodiak Robotics, Inc. was founded in 2018 and has become a leader in autonomous ground transportation committed to a safer and more efficient future for all. The company has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) powered technology stack purpose-built for commercial trucking and the public sector. The company delivers freight daily for its customers across the southern United States using its autonomous technology. In 2024, Kodiak became the first known company to publicly announce delivering a driverless semi-truck to a customer. Kodiak is also leveraging its commercial self-driving software to develop, test and deploy autonomous capabilities for the U.S. Department of Defense. We are looking for a Senior Vehicle Integration Engineer with a field support focus to keep our deployed autonomous systems running at customer sites. You'll own fleet uptime, lead root cause investigations, and act as the technical bridge between customers, field operations, and product engineering — working across hardware, software, firmware, and systems integration to resolve issues fast and drive long-term reliability.

Requirements

Strong bias toward action. You take ownership of ambiguous problems, move quickly to contain issues, and deliver results without waiting for perfect clarity.
Hands on. You are just as comfortable with a wrench as a keyboard. Proven experience debugging and assembling complex hardware/software systems, ideally in autonomous vehicles, robotics, or similarly advanced systems.
Systems thinker. Strong troubleshooting ability across electrical, mechanical, and software domains. Deep familiarity with automotive and embedded electronics, including communication protocols such as Ethernet, CAN, LIN, and 100BASE-T1.
Design-minded. Track record of contributing to hardware or systems design reviews with practical, implementation-focused feedback. You translate field observations and failure trends into actionable design requirements.
Comfort operating in Linux environments and using terminal-based diagnostic tools.
Experience with scripting or programming languages such as Python, C++, C, Bash, or ROS.
Ability to independently solve complex, novel technical problems with minimal guidance.
Great communicator. Strong written and verbal skills across diverse audiences — you can explain a firmware bug to a customer and write a clear troubleshooting guide for the field team.

Nice To Haves

Experience with autonomy-specific sensors such as LiDAR, radar, cameras, and INS systems
Wire harness design, prototyping, soldering, and custom electronics fabrication experience
Familiarity with CAD tools (SolidWorks or similar)
Experience conducting structured failure analysis
Experience working in high-travel, fast-scaling field environments

Responsibilities

Respond rapidly to field failures and technical support requests to maintain system uptime, including extended-hours and on-call support with rotating weekends
Travel frequently to customer and deployment sites to troubleshoot and resolve complex issues (min. 30% travel expected)
Lead cross-functional root cause analysis (RCA) across electrical, mechanical, firmware, and software domains
Drive corrective and preventive actions to eliminate repeat failures
Support implementation of design changes through prototyping, validation testing, and integration at customer sites
Source and define technical requirements for field-facing hardware and integration designs based on real-world failure data and operational needs
Improve diagnostic strategies and tooling to detect and isolate failure modes more rapidly, and recommend reliability enhancements based on operational performance data
Perform preventative, corrective, and predictive maintenance on autonomous platforms
Provide direct design feedback to product and hardware engineering teams grounded in hands-on field experience
Create and review documentation including schematics, drawings, build instructions, and troubleshooting guides

Benefits

Competitive compensation package including equity and annual bonuses
Excellent Medical, Dental, and Vision plans through Kaiser Permanente, Cigna, and MetLife (including a medical plan with infertility benefits)
MetLife Legal Services, Identity & Fraud Protection, Hospital Indemnity Insurance, Accident Insurance, & Critical Illness Insurance
Flexible PTO, 10 paid holidays, and generous parental leave policies
Our office is centrally located in Mountain View, CA
Office perks: dog-friendly, free catered lunch, a fully stocked kitchen, and free EV charging
Long Term Disability, Short Term Disability, Life Insurance
Wellbeing Benefits - Headspace through Cigna, Calm through Kaiser, One Medical, Gympass, Spring Health through Cigna, Rula (mental health navigation)
Fidelity 401(k)
Commuter, FSA, Dependent Care FSA, HSA
Various incentive programs (referral bonuses, patent bonuses, etc.)