Systems Engineer, Autonomous Systems

We’re Blue River, a team of innovators driven to create intelligent machinery that solves monumental problems for our customers. We empower our customers - farmers, construction crews, and foresters to implement safer and more sustainable solutions, driving increased profitability with less reliance on scarce labor. We believe that focusing on the small stuff, pixel-by-pixel and task-by-task, leads to big gains. Blue River Technology aligns with John Deere’s vision to “innovate on behalf of humanity” by quickly identifying and solving high-value, high-uncertainty challenges in AI, machine learning, computer vision, and robotics. BRT acts as a research and development flywheel, building not only new products but also new platforms that reliably create value for both Deere and its customers. From fully autonomous machines to highly precise farming equipment, BRT and Deere are partnering to deliver technical breakthroughs across industries such as agriculture and construction. Our people are at the heart of what we do. Through cross-disciplinary collaboration, this mission-driven team is eager to define the new frontier of robotics. We are always asking hard questions, rapidly iterating, and getting our boots in the field to figure it out. We won’t give up until we’ve made a tangible and positive impact on the planet! Blue River Technology is based in Santa Clara, CA. Summary Construction is facing a structural labor shortage that isn't going away. An aging workforce, declining trade enrollment, and growing infrastructure demand mean the industry needs autonomy, not as a novelty, but as a necessity. The market opportunity is massive, and the technology gap is real. We're building machines that navigate, perceive, and operate in unstructured heavy-construction environments - dirt, dust, steep grades, and dynamic site conditions that challenge the assumptions baked into most autonomy stacks. The technical problems are real and unsolved: robust perception across sensor modalities in environments that degrade each one, planning and controls for heavy equipment with dynamics unlike those of a passenger car, and safeguarding systems where the consequences of getting it wrong are severe. Construction autonomy also has structural advantages over public-road self-driving. Sites are partially or fully closed, the set of actors is known and constrained, and there is real opportunity to define and enforce operational design domain restrictions. This means a shorter path from a capable prototype to a deployed product -- the kind of environment where strong engineering decisions translate into shipped systems, not endless corner-case tails. We are seeking a motivated Senior Systems Engineer for Blue River Technology’s autonomous construction initiative. You will be responsible for developing and maintaining our requirements framework, driving robust verification and validation (V&V) processes, and building simulation tools that ensure our machinery operates safely and reliably in complex environments. This highly cross-functional role spans hardware, software, machine learning, and functional safety, covering the entire development lifecycle from early development and testing to field deployment. We are looking for an experienced, collaborative systems thinker eager to bridge engineering disciplines and shape the future of construction autonomy. Employment Type : Full-Time Work Location : Remote in the United States. Visa sponsorship : Open to visa sponsorship. Job Responsibilities A combination, not necessarily all-inclusive, of the following: Own the requirements lifecycle. You will elicit, define, and maintain system and subsystem-level requirements across hardware, software, and machine learning components. Maintain traceability. You will establish and manage rigorous requirements traceability matrices to seamlessly connect high-level operational concepts down to component specifications and test cases. Drive V&V strategy. You will design…