Computational Imaging and Signal Processing Engineer

Merge Labs; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 185,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Merge Labs is seeking a highly skilled engineer to build and maintain a shared imaging core that turns raw ultrasound data into image series across platforms. You will define performance objectives and develop, optimize, and validate reconstruction methods for real-time imaging and large-scale offline processing.

The role emphasizes improving beamforming, backprojection, and motion estimation, with a focus on speed, robustness, and reproducible benchmarks.

Qualifications

• Strong signal-processing and computational-imaging fundamentals.
• Strong scientific Python skills and experience profiling and improving GPU performance.
• Experience designing and maintaining shared scientific software with clear interfaces, tests, and documentation.

Responsibilities

• Develop reusable methods for beamforming/backprojection, clutter filtering, and motion and displacement estimation within a shared imaging core for processing and optimization.
• Optimize imaging pipelines through controlled experiments, balancing sensitivity, robustness, and computational cost.
• Rigorously validate imaging pipelines using reproducible benchmarks, reference measurements, and regression tests, quantifying performance and uncertainty even when ground truth is limited.
• Produce reliable imaging results, analyze them rigorously, and present findings concisely with their quality and limitations explicit.
• Meet sustained throughput and latency targets for real-time and large-scale offline processing within compute and memory budgets.
• Use measured imaging performance and system limits to shape device and acquisition requirements.
• Explore learned methods, including deep learning, and integrate them when independent evaluation shows a useful improvement over strong baselines.

Skills

Signal processing fundamentals

Computational imaging

Python

GPU performance profiling

Software design & testing

Tools

C++

Bazel

GPU kernels

Job description

Merge Labs is a frontier research lab with the mission of bridging biological and artificial intelligence to maximize human ability, agency and experience. We’re pursuing this goal by developing fundamentally new approaches to brain-computer interfaces that interact with the brain at high bandwidth, integrate with advanced AI, and are ultimately safe and accessible for anyone to use.

About The Team

We turn physical signals into information and back. We reason backward from neural readout and stimulation goals to co-optimize the physical and computational systems that make them possible. Working with scientists and engineers, we combine simulation, measurement, and signal processing across neural interfaces, device characterization, and high-throughput biological screening. Our systems stream tens of gigabits per second. Within constrained power envelopes, we find what limits sensitivity, resolution, and reliability, push what today’s devices can deliver, and set the specifications for future generations.

About The Role

You will build and maintain a shared imaging core that turns raw ultrasound data into image series across our platforms. You will define performance objectives and develop, optimize, and rigorously validate reconstruction methods. A central challenge is making these methods fast enough for real-time imaging and efficient enough for large-scale offline processing. Early work includes bringing existing acquisition and processing pipelines into a common framework that other engineers can use and improve.

In this role, you will:

• Develop reusable methods for beamforming/backprojection, clutter filtering, and motion and displacement estimation within a shared imaging core for processing and optimization.
• Optimize imaging pipelines through controlled experiments, balancing sensitivity, robustness, and computational cost.
• Rigorously validate imaging pipelines using reproducible benchmarks, reference measurements, and regression tests, quantifying performance and uncertainty even when ground truth is limited.
• Produce reliable imaging results, analyze them rigorously, and present findings concisely with their quality and limitations explicit.
• Meet sustained throughput and latency targets for real-time and large-scale offline processing within compute and memory budgets.
• Use measured imaging performance and system limits to shape device and acquisition requirements.
• Explore learned methods, including deep learning, and integrate them when independent evaluation shows a useful improvement over strong baselines.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• Strong signal-processing and computational-imaging fundamentals, with deep experience in at least one imaging or sensing modality.
• Experience developing or materially improving reconstruction methods that others use.
• Strong scientific Python skills and experience profiling and improving GPU performance and memory use for large datasets or high-rate data streams.
• Experience designing and maintaining shared scientific software, with clear interfaces, tests, and documentation.
• Sound judgment in experimental design, optimization, and interpreting measurements.
• A track record of rigorous validation and honest reporting of uncertainty, limitations, and negative findings.
• Experience turning ambiguous scientific needs into useful engineering results with colleagues across disciplines.

Useful, But Not Required

• Ultrasound or related wave-based imaging.
• Prior experience with real-time reconstruction.
• Learned reconstruction or denoising.
• Wave-propagation simulation.
• C++ or custom GPU-kernel development.
• Experience turning scientific Python prototypes into production-quality software, including work with build systems such as Bazel.
• Experience using AI tools or agents to develop scientific software and optimize processing pipelines.

For more information about hiring at Merge, please visit our Hiring FAQ

Merge Labs does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, family status, ancestry, citizenship, U.S. military (state and federal) and veteran status, or any other legally protected status. It is our intention that all applicants be given equal opportunity and that selection decisions are based on job related factors. We are an equal opportunity employer.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made by emailing [e-mail].

Compensation Range: $185K - $260K