Senior Staff AI Engineer, Edge AI at Sonatus
Sunnyvale, CA
$227,000–$300,000
Jul 14, 2026
Sunnyvale, CA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior individual-contributor role focused on building and deploying AI models that monitor and predict the health of in-vehicle subsystems in real time. The work spans the full machine-learning pipeline — from processing vehicle signals, logs, and traces to optimizing and porting models onto resource-constrained edge hardware. It suits an experienced ML engineer with a background in both edge/embedded AI and anomaly detection who is comfortable leading architecture decisions and mentoring others.
Staff level · 10+ years · San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA · Bachelor's required · Full-time
Pay in the description: $227,000–$300,000
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 2 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 20 people in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (data scientists). range 4–35
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $189,150 (middle half $152,859–$224,286). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (7)
The role title is 'Senior Staff AI Engineer' — the posting uses both 'Senior' and 'Staff' in the title. Advertised seniority is treated as Staff based on the explicit 'Staff' designation; the actual scope (cross-team architecture leadership, 10+ years required, end-to-end ML pipeline ownership, mentoring) supports Staff as well.
SOC classification is a genuine judgment call: the role is primarily ML model development and deployment (15-2051 Data Scientists), but the heavy emphasis on production C++ inference code, edge optimization, and pipeline engineering also makes 15-1252 Software Developers a credible fit.
The 3+ years of Edge AI/Embedded Systems experience is stated as a sub-requirement within the 10+ years overall ML Engineering requirement; it is captured on the Edge AI skill's years demanded.
Model optimization techniques (quantization, pruning, distillation, memory optimization) are grouped under a single 'model quantization' skill representing the broader model compression requirement stated in the Requirements section.
CAN bus, SOME/IP, MQTT, Linux/QNX, TensorRT, and Qualcomm SNPE all appear under the 'Desired Skills' heading and are marked preferred accordingly.
The MS/PhD preference is listed under Desired Skills; the hard degree requirement is a Bachelor's as stated in the Requirements section.
Computer Vision / ADAS experience is mentioned as an encouragement ('highly encouraged to apply') rather than a hard gate, so it is not listed as a required skill.
Read the full posting
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