Perception & Sensor Fusion Engineer

THE COMPANY

Saildrone is a maritime defense company and the global leader in autonomous unmanned surface vehicles (USVs). With more ocean miles and real-world operational experience than any USV manufacturer or operator, Saildrone maintains active, combat-deployed systems supporting national security and force projection around the world, 24/7/365.

Saildrone’s manufacturing and R&D headquarters are located in Alameda, CA, with business development and sales operations in Washington, DC, and deployment hubs in Europe and the Middle East. By combining proven autonomous operations, edge computing, advanced sensing, renewable power, and the most advanced and robust unmanned surface technology on the planet, Saildrone is shaping how the Navy of the future operates. Join a fast-moving, mission-driven team at the forefront of maritime security and autonomous innovation.

THE POSITION

Saildrone's vessels use multiple sensors to detect and track objects in the maritime environment. The challenge is turning imperfect observations from different sensors into reliable tracks and useful information for autonomous systems and mission operators.

As a Perception & Sensor Fusion Engineer, you will develop the algorithms and software that combine sensor observations into detections, tracks, and higher-level representations of the environment. Your work may span machine learning, computer vision, tracking, sensor fusion, and active sensing—for example, using information from one sensor to direct a PTZ camera toward an object of interest.

THE RESPONSIBILITIES

• Develop perception and sensor-fusion algorithms that combine observations from multiple sensor modalities. • Develop and evaluate algorithms for object detection, classification, tracking, and estimation. • Train, evaluate, and deploy machine-learning models where ML is the right approach to the problem. • Develop algorithms that use information from one sensor to guide or cue another sensor, including PTZ cameras. • Analyze real-world sensor data to identify failures, edge cases, and opportunities to improve performance. • Integrate perception outputs with production software and cloud applications used by mission operators. • Validate and continuously improve perception capabilities using real operational data.

THE QUALIFICATIONS

• Strong software engineering and algorithm-development skills in Python and/or C++. • Hands-on experience with perception, computer vision, sensor fusion, tracking, or related robotics algorithms. • Experience working with real sensor data and developing systems that must perform reliably in uncontrolled environments. • Strong understanding of one or more areas such as object detection, multi-object tracking, state estimation, sensor fusion, or computer vision. • Experience developing and evaluating machine-learning models for perception. • Ability to turn noisy sensor observations into reliable, measurable system outputs. • Experience taking algorithms from development through integration and validation in a production system.