Principal Perception Engineer, CV/ML

As a Principal Perception Engineer at Sphere Defense, you will design and develop state-of-the-art perception pipelines for autonomous countermeasures against aerial threats. You will own the full pipeline from sensor integration to target tracking, working hands-on with hardware and mentoring the team. This role is critical to building the core technology of a defense startup.

Responsibilities

• Be one of the first members of a high-performing team, designing and developing autonomous countermeasures to protect allied countries from aerial threats
• Own, design, develop, document and test state of the art perception pipelines based on vision and other data for situational awareness, detection, identification and tracking of targets
• Integrate, evaluate and fuse data coming from EO/IR, IMUs, radars and other sources
• Be hands-on, working close to the hardware when needed during development and tests
• Draft and review documentation and design documents
• Be a team player and a mentor, being available to support and grow the team when needed

Requirements

• Master’s degree (PhD+ preferred) in Computer Vision, Automation, Robotics, or equivalent
• At least 12 years of experience in relevant, industry or academy positions
• Proficiency with one production language (C++ or Rust) and one prototyping language (Python)
• Demonstrated ability to produce production-grade, highly optimized target code on resource constrained platforms
• Demonstrated ownership of complex, production-grade perception pipelines based on vision (IR and RGB) in commercial systems
• Experience with implementing and training machine learning models, including data quality topics
• Familiarity with ROS2 or iceoryx2
• Understanding of control systems and state estimation
• Experience with multi-modal sensor fusion (IMUs, radars, lasers, etc.)
• Excellent interpersonal communication skills in written and spoken English; French or Dutch is a plus
• You are a self-starter, able to work in a high-ambiguity environment and willing to take up new challenges

Nice to have

• Experience with VIO/SLAM
• Experience with drones (quadcopters, fixed-wing) or homing missiles
• Experience with IR/thermal imaging and their calibration
• Previous experience in the defense industry

Benefits

• Attractive compensation
• Year-end bonus eligibility
• Stock Options Plan eligibility
• Mobility Budget
• 32 days of holidays
• Meal vouchers
• Private Health insurance