Multimodal Sensing and Fusion Engineer Hardware Engineering Berlin; London; Munich

helsing.ai; Germany (OH); On-site; USD 80,580 - 126,626; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

VSOP options

Relocation support

Learning: €500/£450 yearly allowance

Health & wellness: gym membership and

Social: monthly social allowances

Enhanced parental leave: 22 weeks

Remote work option during pregnancy

Job summary

Helsing is seeking a Multimodal Sensing and Fusion Engineer to own the sensing stack end-to-end, integrating EO/LWIR cameras, radar, LiDAR, and IMU to feed Helsing's AI. You will specify sensor selection, placement, synchronization, and calibration, and define safety concepts for field deployments.

You will work at the intersection of hardware, electrical engineering, and AI research, collaborating with teams across Europe.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. or M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Applied Physics, Robotics, or related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Professional track record in multimodal sensing or sensor-fusion systems (two or more of cameras, radar, LiDAR, IMU).
• Experience with system-level synchronisation (PTP/gPTP, PPS, hardware triggers).
• Mastery of sensor calibration (intrinsic/extrinsic, spatial/temporal) and maintenance across multi-sensor rigs.
• Ability to derive safety concepts for sensing or perception subsystems (defence/auto safety standards).
• Strong systems design instincts for hardware-software-algorithm interfaces, and low-level debugging in C/C++ or Rust plus Python.

Responsibilities

• Define the multimodal sensing architecture: select and integrate EO and LWIR cameras, radar, LiDAR, and IMUs, aligning requirements with the AI team to optimise algorithm performance and balance trade-offs across size, weight, power, cost, and robustness.
• Own sensor synchronisation: design and implement time synchronisation across heterogeneous sensors using PTP/gPTP, PPS, and hardware triggers such as Hsync and Vsync.
• Own sensor calibration: develop intrinsic, extrinsic, spatial, and temporal calibration procedures, including online and continuous recalibration, across cameras, radar, and IMU.
• Define safety concepts: derive failure modes, fault detection, isolation, and recovery concepts for the sensing subsystem, drawing on defence mission-safety thinking and automotive functional-safety practice (ISO 26262, SOTIF).
• Drive system design and architecture: analyse the interplay of hardware, software, and algorithm architectures, and define interfaces and data pipelines from sensor to AI.
• Bring hardware to life: hands-on lab work to bring up prototypes, test performance, and support integration into the software stack.
• Tune data quality: analyse application-specific sensing performance and adjust designs and low-level algorithms to maximise sensor data value for downstream AI.

Skills

Multimodal sensing

Sensor fusion

C/C++

Python

System synchronization

Camera/LiDAR/IMU

Education

Ph.D. or M.Sc. in EE/CE/Applied Physics/Robotics

Tools

FPGA

Linux

Job description

Helsing is a defence AI company. Our mission is to protect our democracies. We aim to achieve technological leadership, so that open societies can continue to make sovereign decisions and control their ethical standards.

As democracies, we believe we have a special responsibility to be thoughtful about the development and deployment of powerful technologies like AI. We take this responsibility seriously.

We are an ambitious and committed team of engineers, AI specialists and customer-facing programme managers. We are looking for mission-driven people to join our European teams – and apply their skills to solve the most complex and impactful problems. We embrace an open and transparent culture that welcomes healthy debates on the use of technology in defence, its benefits, and its ethical implications.

The role

Helsing builds software and AI that makes existing defence hardware up to ten times more capable. The sensing stack is where that capability begins. Without precise, synchronised, calibrated sensor data, the AI has nothing to work with.

As Multimodal Sensing and FusionEngineer, you will own that stack end to end. You will architect the multimodal perception front-end that combines electro-optical and long-wave infrared cameras, radar, LiDAR, and inertial sensing into a single, coherent input to Helsing's AI. You will translate mission requirements into concrete specifications for sensorselection, placement, synchronisation, and calibration, and you will define the safety concepts that ensure the system degrades gracefully and fails safe in the field.

This is not a prototyping role. The systems you design go into operational environments. The quality of the data you deliver directly affects the decisions Helsing's AI supports in the field. You will sit at the intersection of hardware engineers, electrical engineers, and AI and computer-vision researchers, working out of Munich,Berlinor London.

The day-to-day

• Define the multimodal sensing architecture: select and integrate EO and LWIR cameras, radar, LiDAR, and IMUs, aligning requirements with the AI team to optimise algorithm performance and balance trade-offs across size, weight, power, cost, and robustness.
• Own sensor synchronisation: design and implement time synchronisation across heterogeneous sensors using PTP/gPTP, PPS, and hardware triggers such asHsyncandVsync, so all modalities share a common, precise time base.
• Own sensor calibration: develop intrinsic, extrinsic, spatial, and temporal calibration procedures, including online and continuous recalibration, across cameras, radar, and IMU.
• Define safety concepts: derive failure modes, fault detection, isolation, and recovery concepts for the sensing subsystem, drawing on both defence mission-safety thinking and automotive functional-safety practice (ISO 26262, SOTIF).
• Drive system design and architecture: analyse the interplay of hardware, software, and algorithm architectures, and define the interfaces and data pipelines from sensor to AI.
• Bring hardware to life: spend hands-on time in the lab bringing up prototypes, testing performance under varying conditions, and supporting integration into the software stack.
• Tune data quality: analyse application-specific sensing performance and adjust designs and low-level algorithms to maximise the value sensor data provides to downstream AI applications.

You should apply if you

• A Ph.D. or M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Applied Physics, Robotics, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• A professionaltrack recordbuilding multimodal sensing or sensor-fusion systems combining at least two of: cameras (EO and/or LWIR), radar, LiDAR, and IMU.
• Demonstrated understanding of system-level synchronisation, including PTP/gPTP, PPS, and hardware triggers such asHsyncandVsync.
• Mastery of sensor calibration, intrinsic and extrinsic,spatialand temporal, including strategies formaintainingcalibration across a multi-sensor rig over its operational lifetime.
• The ability to derive safety concepts for a sensing orperceptionsubsystem, from a defence or mission-critical background, an automotive functional-safety background (ISO 26262, SOTIF), or both.
• Strong systems design instincts, comfortable reasoning about the interplay of hardware, software, and algorithms.
• Proficiencyin C/C++ or Rust for low-level firmware development and hardware-software interface debugging, plus Python.

Note: We operate in an industry where women, as well as other minority groups, are systematically under-represented. We encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet all the listed qualifications; ability and impact cannot be summarised in a few bullet points.

Nice to Have

• Depth in one or more of the following sensor modalities: thermal imaging (LWIR design, calibration, and programming), FMCW radar signal processing (detection, clustering, and tracking), or LiDAR and point-cloud processing includingcross-calibrationwith cameras and radar.
• IMU and inertial navigationexpertise, including GNSS/INS integration, bias and error modelling, and sensor alignment.
• Sensor-fusion estimation experience: Kalman/EKF/UKF, particle filters, factor graphs, multi-object tracking, and data association.
• Low-level hardware experience: FPGA development using Verilog,SystemVerilog, or VHDL, Linux kernel driver development, or experience with high-bandwidth sensor interfaces such as MIPI CSI-2 or LVDS.
• A background in automotive, robotics, or aerospace sensor fusion, covering ADAS, AUTOSAR, ROS, or ISO 26262 and SOTIF, and familiarity with how sensor data feeds downstream computer-vision or AI pipelines.

Join Helsing and work with world-leading experts in their fields

Helsing’s work is important. You’ll be directly contributing to the protection of democratic countries while balancing both ethical and geopolitical concerns

The work is unique. We operate in a domain that has highly unusual technical requirements and constraints, and where robustness, safety, and ethical considerations are vital. You will face unique Engineering and AI challenges that make a meaningful impact in the world

Our work frequently takes us right up to the state of the art in technical innovation, be it reinforcement learning, distributed systems, generative AI, or deployment infrastructure. The defence industry is entering the most exciting phase of the technological development curve. Advances in our field of world are not incremental: Helsing is part of, and often leading, historic leaps forward

In our domain, success is a matter of order-of-magnitude improvements and novel capabilities. This means we take bets, aim high, and focus on big opportunities. Despite being a relatively young company, Helsing has already been selected for multiple significant government contracts

We actively encourage healthy, proactive, and diverse debate internally about what we do and how we choose to do it. Teams and individual engineers are trusted (and encouraged) to practise responsible autonomy and critical thinking, and to focus on outcomes, not conformity. At Helsing you will have a say in how we (and you!) work, the opportunity to engage on what does and doesn’t work, and to take ownership of aspects of our culture that you care deeply about

What we offer

Competitive salary and VSOP options

Relocation support: up to €2,500 and 4 weeks temporary accommodation

Learning: €500/£450 yearly allowance

Health & wellness: gym membership and mental health support (Nilo.health)

Social: regular company events and monthly social allowances

Enhanced parental leave: 22 weeks fully paid for primary caregivers & 6 weeks for secondary caregivers

Family support: 5 days of paid family emergency leave, 100% remote work option during pregnancy and phased return to work

A hands-on onboarding program (affectionately labelled "Infraduction"), in which you will be building tooling and applications to be used across the company. This is your opportunity to learn our tech stack, explore the company, and learn how we get things done - all whilst working with other engineering teams from day one

Helsing is an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability or gender identity. Please do not submit personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, data concerning your health, or data concerning your sexual orientation.

Helsing's Candidate Privacy and Confidentiality Regime can be found here .