AI / Perception Lead Engineer

AI / Perception Lead Engineer

Location:
New York City, NY (Onsite)

Employment Type:
Full-time

Compensation:
$300,000 – $650,000 annually

Overview

A fast-growing, early-stage defense technology organization is seeking an AI / Perception Lead Engineer to own and deliver the perception layer of an advanced autonomy stack.

This is a high-impact, hands-on role focused on building real-time computer vision and sensor fusion systems that operate reliably on constrained edge hardware in dynamic environments. This is not a research-only position — the role spans concept → prototype → field deployment .

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and deploy real-time object detection, classification, and tracking systems .
• Optimize machine learning models for edge deployment (Jetson, ARM, accelerators).
• Build multi-sensor perception pipelines (camera, LiDAR, etc.).
• Improve system robustness under real-world conditions (lighting, motion blur, occlusion).
• Integrate perception outputs into downstream autonomy systems.

Required Qualifications

• Strong experience with modern computer vision models (YOLO, transformers, tracking systems).
• Experience training, fine-tuning, and deploying models.
• Experience with edge inference optimization (TensorRT, ONNX, etc.).
• Strong programming skills in Python and C++ (or Rust) .
• Experience working with real-time video pipelines.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with hardware accelerators (e.g., Hailo or similar).
• Experience with multi-object tracking (ByteTrack, DeepSORT).
• Experience with dataset pipelines (e.g., Roboflow or similar).
• Experience deploying models on embedded systems.

Additional Requirements

• Must meet ITAR requirements (U.S. Citizen, Green Card holder, or eligible status).
• Onsite work required in NYC.