Senior Radar Systems Lead - Robotics & Drones

We are building a new Robotics business at Aptiv, focused on Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) and Drones for warehouse, industrial, and adjacent markets. As a Sr Radar Systems Lead, you will work closely with product management, hardware/SoC teams, and engineering partners to turn PoCs into scalable, reusable architectures that can be deployed across multiple customers and robot form factors.

We are seeking a Senior Radar Systems Engineer with deep expertise in radar system design, signal processing, and end-to-end sensing architecture for advanced AMR and drone platforms. This role emphasizes ownership of radar-centric systems—from sensor characteristics and waveform design through signal processing pipelines and perception integration—while leveraging modern software tooling and cloud-based infrastructure to enable scalable development, validation, and deployment.

You will lead the design and technical direction of radar-enabled sensing systems, bridging theory, algorithm development, and real-world deployment across autonomous platforms.

Key Responsibilities:

Radar Systems Engineering & Signal Processing

• Own the end-to-end radar sensing architecture, including waveform selection, signal chain design, calibration, and performance characterization.
• Design and develop radar signal processing pipelines focused on raw data ingestion, range/Doppler processing, beamforming, detection, tracking, and classification.
• Define system-level performance requirements (range, resolution, latency, power, interference robustness) and ensure alignment across hardware and software.
• Develop and maintain MATLAB-based radar analysis and modeling tools for algorithm development, system validation, and performance evaluation.
• Analyze real-world radar data to validate models, tune algorithms, and improve robustness across diverse environments.
• Collaborate with perception teams to integrate radar outputs into multi-sensor fusion frameworks (radar & camera).
• Conduct anechoic chamber testing to verify radar concepts and validate algorithm performance.
• Participate in robotics and drone testing to validate radar sensor performance in real-world environments

System Architecture & Integration

• Support the system architecture of radar-enabled AMR and drone platforms, spanning radar sensors, & onboard compute.
• Define interfaces and data flows between radar subsystems, perception stacks, autonomy modules, and external services.
• Partition processing across sensor-level, & edge, optimizing for latency, bandwidth, and scalability.
• Support integration with ROS 2, Linux-based systems, and real-time middleware, ensuring robust communication across distributed components.
• Work closely with hardware teams to ensure proper sensor integration, synchronization, and calibration within the broader system.

Algorithm Development & Deployment

• Develop, prototype, and validate radar signal processing algorithms in MATLAB, and guide their transition into production environments.
• Ensure algorithms are robust to real-world challenges such as noise, multipath, interference, and environmental variability.
• Support development of containerized data processing pipelines for large-scale radar data analysis and validation.
• Define and maintain data standards, labeling approaches, and evaluation metrics for radar perception systems.

Technical Leadership

• Drive the development of next-gen radar systems from inception to realization, including requirements analysis, algorithm development, and system concept architectures
• Lead system-level trade studies across radar modalities, processing architectures, and compute platforms.
• Provide technical direction across radar system design, signal processing, and perception integration.
• Mentor engineers on best practices in radar system modeling, validation, and deployment workflows.
• Collaborate with hardware, embedded, and compute teams to map workloads across CPU, GPU, DSP, and specialized accelerators.

Customer & Partner Engagement

• Translate customer and partner requirements into radar system specifications and sensing architectures.
• Support proofs of concept, demonstrations, and field deployments involving radar-enabled perception.
• Contribute to long-term technology roadmaps spanning radar hardware, signal processing, and autonomy integration.

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Physics, Computer Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• 5+ years of experience in radar systems engineering, sensing systems, or autonomous platforms.
• Strong background in radar signal processing fundamentals (FMCW, pulse radar, Doppler processing, detection, tracking).
• Proven experience with real-world radar systems, including data collection, calibration, and performance evaluation.
• Proficiency in MATLAB for modeling, simulation, and algorithm development.
• Understanding of system architecture, embedded systems, and real-time processing constraints.
• Strong analytical, debugging, and system validation skills.
• Familiarity with anechoic chamber testing and vehicle-level testing methodologies.
• Excellent communication skills for conveying complex technical concepts.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Deep expertise with FMCW radar systems, including waveform design and MIMO/beamforming techniques.
• Experience with multi-sensor fusion (radar + vision).
• Familiarity with antenna systems, RF front-end design, or electromagnetic considerations.
• Experience transitioning research algorithms into production systems.
• Experience with cloud-based data pipelines for large-scale sensor data processing and analytics.
• Familiarity with simulation environments and data replay tools for sensor validation.
• Experience with heterogeneous compute platforms (GPU, DSP, FPGA, or NPU) for signal processing workloads.
• Background in autonomous systems (AMR, drones, automotive, or robotics platforms).
• Experience working with Linux and robotics middleware (ROS/ROS 2 or similar).
• Experience working in fast-paced, ambiguous environments.

Traits we seek:

• Curiosity-driven problem solvers who investigate deeply and think systemically.
• Confident leaders who empower teams, set direction, and earn trust.
• Hands-on learners with an experimental, builder mindset.
• Resilient thinkers who see challenges as opportunities to learn and improve.