Software Architect - Tracking

Hawk-Eye Innovations; United Kingdom; On-site; GBP 100,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Hawk-Eye Innovations in the United Kingdom seeks a lead architect to own the architecture of tracking and officiating products across T&AO. You set initial designs for new tracking problems, manage code ownership for calibration, and ensure consistency across Hawk-Eye and Sony Sports.

You will drive computer vision direction, prototype where needed, and champion agentic tooling, heavy C++ and Python codebases, and ML pipelines while coaching engineers and collaborating with partners.

Qualifications

• Deep multi-camera computer vision background.
• Experience with camera calibration: intrinsics, extrinsics, distortion models.
• Proven track record of architecture leadership in CV systems.

Responsibilities

• Define architecture for tracking and officiating products across the value stream.
• Lead computer vision direction, prototypes and ML integration.
• Drive modern tooling adoption including agentic coding frameworks.
• Coach engineers, run technical talks, and contribute to hiring assessments.
• Collaborate with Sony, NVIDIA and AWS among external partners.

Skills

C++ cross-platform

GPU inference

ML pipelines

AWS edge deployment

LLM orchestration

Tools

TensorRT

Triton

PyTorch

ONNX

CUDA

Job description

What You Would Own

Architecture across the value stream.

You are the lead architect for every tracking and auto-officiating product in T&AO. You set the initial architecture when a new tracking problem enters the business, run the Software Domain Owner model so shared libraries like calibration have named codeowners, and keep designs consistent across sports. You represent tracking in the Engineering Architecture Steering group and feed into architecture conversations across Hawk-Eye and the wider Sony Sports organisation.

Computer vision direction.

You are the subject matter authority. You decide where our vision processing and ML integration goes next, research new tracking technologies and bring them in, and build prototypes when a proposal needs proving rather than describing.

Modern tooling, properly evaluated.

We want agentic coding frameworks, LLM-driven development tools and automated code generation working inside heavy C++ and Python codebases, with guidelines that hold up. You would lead that adoption and decide what earns its place.

Growing other engineers.

You coach the Squad Tech Leads, guide junior architects, and run CV Algorithm talks, HawkTalks and tutorials. You also help us hire well, including technical assessment for CV and ML roles.

The awkward bits.

Operational health of ML training and synthetic data infrastructure sits with you, including escalating the gaps in ownership and support with options attached.

What we are looking for

The core of it is deep multi-camera computer vision. Camera calibration including intrinsics, extrinsics, distortion models, anti-wobble and bundle adjustment. Triangulation. 3D ball and pose estimation, skeletal tracking, continuous-time modelling, inverse kinematics.

On top of that:

• Expert cross-platform C++ across Windows and Linux, x86 and ARM, with CMake and real performance profiling ability
• Strong working knowledge of GPU inference (TensorRT, Triton) and ML pipelines (PyTorch, ONNX)
• Proven experience running tracking at scale in AWS, on-premise and on edge devices
• Hands‑on use of AI coding agents and LLM orchestration to accelerate algorithm R&D and refactoring in large codebases
• A working understanding of generative AI, synthetic data generation and where they genuinely help real-time CV

The parts that are harder to put in a bullet point. You can set architecture across many squads and sports and make pragmatic calls on reuse, cost and time to market. You write clearly: design documents, proposals with options, explanations a non-technical stakeholder can follow. You are comfortable in front of external engineering partners, which here means Sony, NVIDIA and AWS alongside sports leagues and federations. And you can size work honestly, state your confidence in it, and say what we should stop or delay.

What This Role Is Not

Worth being direct about, because senior CV engineers are usually offered the other thing.

This is not a people management role. Nobody reports to you. Line management sits elsewhere and we are not planning to move it.

It is not project or delivery management either. Delivery Leads coordinate squad delivery across T&AO. You own technical direction and escalation, not sprint management.

You are not a Product Owner. Product sets the market and problem priorities, you work with them to define the solution.

You are not a Squad Tech Lead. Day-to-day technical leadership of squads sits with the Squad Tech Leads and Engineering Leads. You mentor them and step in on the complex and high-risk problems.

And you are not a gatekeeper for other value streams. You give them alignment and access to shared tracking IP. You do not own their roadmaps.