Perception Engineer - Defense Autonomy

About Applied Intuition

Applied Intuition is the vehicle intelligence company that accelerates the global adoption of safe, AI-driven machines. Founded in 2017, Applied Intuition delivers the toolchain, Vehicle OS, and autonomy stacks to help customers build intelligent vehicles and shorten time to market. Eighteen of the top 20 global automakers and major programs across the Department of Defense trust Applied Intuition's solutions to deliver vehicle intelligence. Applied Intuition services the automotive, defense, trucking, construction, mining, and agriculture industries and is headquartered in Mountain View, CA, with offices in Washington, D.C., San Diego, CA, Ft. Walton Beach, FL, Ann Arbor, MI, London, Stuttgart, Munich, Stockholm, Seoul, and Tokyo. Learn more at appliedintuition.com.

We are an in-office company, and our expectation is that employees primarily work from their Applied Intuition office 5 days a week. However, we also recognize the importance of flexibility and trust our employees to manage their schedules responsibly. This may include occasional remote work, starting the day with morning meetings from home before heading to the office, or leaving earlier when needed to accommodate family commitments. (Note: For EpiSci job openings, fully remote work will be considered by exception.)

About EpiSci

EpiSci, an Applied Intuition company, develops next-generation, tactical autonomy solutions for national security problems. EpiSci’s autonomy software is technology agnostic, operationally informed, tactically relevant, and has piloted swarms of uncrewed aerial systems and tactical fighter aircraft. Additional applications include crewed-uncrewed teaming for air dominance, cognitive sensors, and networks for advanced communications systems, as well as battle management command and control for informed decision-making. EpiSci delivers unmatched speed, cost-efficiency, and scalability as the preferred partner for defense agencies and industry teams seeking mission-critical autonomy solutions.

About the role

As a Perception Autonomy engineer at EpiSci you will be pivotal in developing, integrating, and maintaining real-time sensor software solutions deployed across a range of heterogenous autonomous vehicles and different domains (e.g., land, air, sea, and space).  You will work with a team to continuously add capability and demonstrate the solution to customers in real-world scenarios on a variety of hardware platforms. Your responsibility will primarily be designing, developing, and rapidly integrating AI/ML sensor algorithms to interface across different platforms,  ingest relevant mission information, and support the autonomy team’s mission objectives. This work includes developing autonomous sensor controllers to optimally fuse information between state-of-the-art sensor systems, such as EO, IR, acoustics, radar, and RF.

At EpiSci, you will:

• Develop, integrate, and adapt cutting-edge AI/ML algorithms running on the perception autonomy stack to collect relevant information across a suite of platform sensors
• Create interfacing software to autonomously control sensors (e.g., EO, IR, acoustics, radar, and RF)
• Collaborate across the sensor, tracking, and autonomy teams to ensure seamless deployment of heterogenous platform swarms in on-site DoD testing and demonstration events
• Deploy containerized autonomy solutions to embedded Linux devices, leveraging computer-in-the-loop testing and profiling, and efficiently collecting performance data
• Interact with the DoD customer to understand their use cases, requirements, and triage needs during field events to deliver a superior customer experience
• Work closely with our existing team to internally triage technical problems and scope
• Carefully communicate and document ongoing work to ensure internal flexibility in a fast paced environment as well as clarify progress with external customers
• Drive execution of simulation tooling to playback sensors, platforms, and autonomy in post processing field test analysis
• Implement improvement plans for future integration efforts based on simulation analysis and customer feedback

We're looking for someone who has:

• MS or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Robotic Engineering, Computer Science, Optimization, or equivalent OR 5+ years of relevant experience working with sensor algorithms, hardware, and HIL software integration
• Experience with multiple sensor modalities (e.g., EO, IR, lidar, radar, sonar, acoustics, etc.)
• Core understanding of sensor physics and sensor control parameters
• Experience training and deploying ML algorithms (python, pytorch, tensorflow) onto integrated systems (onnx, C++ models)
• Familiar