Senior Field Application Engineer, Robotics & Drones
We are Aptiv - a global technology company with 200,000 specialists in 48 countries. We develop innovative software and build the hardware to bring autonomous driving cars, advanced driver-assistance systems, connected vehicles and smart cities to life in a way that only we can. We work in partnership with almost all car manufacturers. Our sensors, systems and software can already be found in almost all passenger cars today.
We are building a new Robotics business at Aptiv, focused on Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) and Drones for warehouse, industrial, and adjacent markets. We’re looking for a Senior Field Application Engineer (FAE) who will be the primary technical interface to our customers and partners. You’ll help AMR/drone OEMs and integrators evaluate, integrate, and debug Aptiv’s sensors, perception software, and robotics platform – from first PoC through pilot and production.
In addition to hands-on engineering, you will play a key role in pre-sales activities: shaping technical solutions, contributing to business case development, and partnering with Business Development and Finance to support proposals and deals.
Key Responsibilities:
Customer-Facing Engineering
- Act as the primary technical contact for selected AMR/drone OEMs, integrators, and partners.
- Lead technical discovery and solution definition: organize and prepare for customer facing technical workshops, understand customer use cases, constraints, and success criteria and map them to Aptiv’s offerings.
- Support PoC and pilot deployments, including sensor installation, software bring-up, and troubleshooting on customer platforms.
Pre-Sales & Business Case Support
- Partner with Head of Business Development, Product Management, and Finance to shape customer-specific solutions and proposals.
- Contribute to business case development by quantifying technical impact into benefits (throughput, safety, uptime, TCO, etc.).
- Provide technical inputs to pricing and deal structures (configuration choices, BOM assembly, pre-production engineering effort, deployment complexity).
- Primary coordinator for RFI & RFP response across respective teams, including drafting technical content, solution diagrams, effort estimates, validated BOM cost estimations, & initial price guidance.
- Join customer pre-sales meetings and workshops to represent the technical solution and address detailed engineering questions.
Feedback & Product Input
- Capture field feedback (gaps, UX issues, performance pain points) and feed it into Product Management and Architecture.
- Contribute to application notes, reference designs, and best-practice guides for common robot platforms and use cases.
- Help shape evaluation kits and demo setups that make it easier for new customers to get started.
Enablement & Documentation
- Deliver technical trainings, workshops, and demos for customer engineering teams and internal stakeholders.
- Create and maintain integration guides, FAQs, and troubleshooting playbooks.
- Support trade shows, conferences, and customer demo days as the hands-on technical expert.
Basic Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Electrical/Computer Engineering, Robotics, Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience.
- 10+ years of experience in a field application / solutions engineering / robotics integration role or similar customer-facing technical position.
- Hands-on experience with real robots (AMRs, AGVs, drones, industrial robots) or embedded systems in production or pilot environments.
- Solid skills in Linux and at least one programming/scripting language (C++ and/or Python).
- Practical experience with ROS / ROS 2 (building, running, and debugging nodes, topics, launch files, etc.).
- Working knowledge of one or more robotics sensors: lidar, radar, cameras, IMUs, encoders, safety sensors.
- Demonstrated experience in pre-sales or solutions engineering, supporting technical proposals, PoCs, or business case discussions with customers.
- Comfortable discussing basic ROI/TCO concepts and translating technical features into customer value.
- Strong communication skills and ability to explain complex technical topics to mixed technical/non-technical audiences.
- Strong financial acumen to support business case assembly.
- Proven ability to drive the coordination of multiple stakeholders towards a common mission.
- Willingness to travel to customer sites, test facilities, and field trials (typically ~25–40%, with some flexibility).
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with warehouse / industrial automation and safety-relevant applications.
- Familiarity with heterogeneous compute SoCs, hardware acceleration, and deployment of perception/ML workloads.
- Exposure to functional safety or industrial safety standards (e.g., ISO 13849, ISO 3691-4, IEC 61508, or ISO 26262).
- Experience with simulation tools (Gazebo, Isaac Sim, Webots, or similar) for regression and scenario testing.
- Prior work in a robotics platform company supporting OEMs and integrators.
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Aptiv is an equal employment opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability status, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.