Edge AI & Vision Engineer for Smart Manufacturing

Work4ce Inc; Georgetown (KY); On-site; USD 110,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

100% premiums for medical, dental, and

17 PTO days

8 paid holidays

401K match

Paid OT

Job summary

Work4ce Inc. seeks a Manufacturing Innovation Advanced Technology Engineer to advance computer vision for defect detection and real-time inspection in automotive manufacturing. You will design, train, and deploy edge AI models, optimize for embedded hardware, and integrate with PLCs and OPC-UA/MQTT networks.

You will lead data campaigns, manage vendors, and drive production-ready AI solutions with containerized software aimed at improving manufacturing competitiveness.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology or related field.
• 5 years of experience in industrial machine vision and edge AI deployment.
• Proficiency in Python and C++ with strong knowledge of ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow).
• Hands-on experience with containerization (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes).
• Experience integrating vision systems with PLCs and industrial protocols (OPC-UA, MQTT).
• Experience managing the full model lifecycle: data collection, labeling, validation, rollout, monitoring, and retraining
• Experience in object detection, classification, segmentation and familiarity with mainstream object detection and semantic/instance segmentation models.
• Familiarity with industrial cameras, lighting, and optics, including trigger-based image capture.

Responsibilities

• Balance inspection accuracy with false positives vs flow-out risk in quality.
• Design and implement computer vision models for defect detection, segmentation, and classification.
• Accelerate training cycles using synthetic data, active learning, and domain randomization.
• Production Deployment.
• Package models and services using Docker and manage deployments through Kubernetes or equivalent orchestration tools.
• Implement version control, rollback strategies, and observability for latency, drift, and false-positive/false-negative metrics.
• Edge Optimization.
• Optimize inference for edge and embedded hardware (e.g., NVIDIA Jetson, Intel accelerators) to meet strict real-time latency requirements for moving-line inspection.
• Ensure consistent performance under varying lighting, optics, and surface conditions.
• Integration with Manufacturing Systems.
• Integrate vision systems with PLCs, encoders, triggers, and industrial networks using OPC-UA, MQTT, and REST protocols.
• Lead data collection campaigns, manage annotation workflows, and establish quality gates for model validation.
• Utilize synthetic data pipelines and augmentation techniques to improve model robustness and reduce training time.
• Reliability & Sustainment.
• Ensure uptime and availability targets are met through proactive monitoring, calibration (MSA), and backup/restore processes.
• Develop and deploy production-grade machine learning models for industrial vision inspection systems across manufacturing lines.
• Accelerating model development and training using advanced techniques such as synthetic data generation, ensuring high accuracy and generalization, and delivering containerized software optimized for edge hardware.
• Development of new technologies for Manufacturing competitiveness improvement
• Lead and manage projects from concept to launch for new technology first introduction to manufacturing including creating schedules, establishing punch lists, and meeting established due dates and milestones.
• Search for innovative solutions, test them in a manufacturing setting, and develop business case justification to gain approval to purchase if trials prove successful.

Skills

Python

C++

ML frameworks

Edge AI deployment

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Electrical/Mechanical/CS/IT

Master’s degree (preferred)

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

ONNX Runtime

TensorRT

OPC-UA

MQTT

NVIDIA Jetson

Git

Job description

Work4ce Inc. seeks a Manufacturing Innovation Advanced Technology Engineer to advance computer vision for defect detection and real-time inspection in automotive manufacturing. You will design, train, and deploy edge AI models, optimize for embedded hardware, and integrate with PLCs and OPC-UA/MQTT networks.

You will lead data campaigns, manage vendors, and drive production-ready AI solutions with containerized software aimed at improving manufacturing competitiveness.