Autonomy Perception Engineer — Drone CV & SLAM

BrightAI; Palo Alto (CA); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

BrightAI is seeking a Computer Vision Engineer for Perception in Autonomy in Palo Alto. You will own perception for a moving drone platform, focusing on reconstruction, pose estimation, and simulation environments used to train and evaluate flight policies.

We value hands-on SLAM/VO with PyTorch, C++ and Python skills, and experience deploying perception systems on real hardware with on-site calibration and data collection.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of experience in computer vision or robotics perception in real-world environments.
• Strong understanding of multi-view geometry with ability to debug bundle adjustment.
• Hands-on SLAM, SfM, or visual-inertial odometry.
• Proficiency in PyTorch with field data experiments.
• Experience on moving platforms (drone/robot) where ground truth is costly.
• Comfort with hardware interfaces: camera sync, calibration rigs, flight logs.
• Ability to clearly document design decisions for other teams.

Responsibilities

• Own reconstruction and perception components for a moving platform, including poses and training environments.
• Develop and evaluate Gaussian splatting, photogrammetric pipelines, and georeferenced scenes from imagery.
• Work on pose estimation, RTK/GNSS/IMU fusion, and visual-inertial odometry.
• Create simulation environments for training and evaluating flight policies.
• Address change detection across reconstructions over time and define perception signals for planning.

Skills

Multiview geometry

PyTorch

SLAM / VIO

C++

Python

Robotics perception

Hardware awareness

Tools

Python

C++

ROS

Job description

BrightAI is seeking a Computer Vision Engineer for Perception in Autonomy in Palo Alto. You will own perception for a moving drone platform, focusing on reconstruction, pose estimation, and simulation environments used to train and evaluate flight policies.

We value hands-on SLAM/VO with PyTorch, C++ and Python skills, and experience deploying perception systems on real hardware with on-site calibration and data collection.