Staff Systems Engineer - Camera

Your Charter

Own the camera stack NEO sees through, from the sensor and lens selected for the robot to the calibrated, rectified frames every perception model consumes. This is critical-path work: no vision model is better than the images it is handed, and nothing downstream survives a camera that is miscalibrated, badly tuned, or quietly dropping frames. You will own that path from vendor selection through end-of-line calibration on the production line and out to robots already working in homes.

Key Outcomes

• Own camera selection end to end: define sensor, lens, and module requirements with the hardware and perception teams, run the trade studies, and carry a choice through vendor engagement and bring-up on real hardware
• Deliver a camera pipeline that holds up in production: sensor drivers, multi-camera synchronization and timestamping, and frame delivery that meets its latency budget without dropping frames or destabilizing timestamps
• Tune the image path for machines rather than for people: exposure, white balance, and dynamic range chosen so perception models are accurate in real homes, including the low light and hard backlight a living room actually presents
• Make calibration a production process, not a lab procedure: intrinsics and extrinsics calibrated on the line inside cycle time, validated automatically, monitored for drift across the fleet, and recoverable in the field

Key Competencies

• Camera systems depth understanding sensors, optics, and ISP as one system, and how an image travels a robotics stack from capture through transport, compression, and transformation to the model that consumes it
• Lives at the hardware boundary debugging across MIPI CSI-2, serdes links, I2C, PoE, and power and clock sequencing, and treating dropped frames, timestamp instability, and bandwidth limits as everyday failure modes rather than mysteries
• Calibration rigor treating calibration as measurement with error bars, reasoning about tolerances and uncertainty, and knowing how a calibration error propagates into what a perception model gets wrong
• Thinks in fleets, not units designing calibration and diagnostics that survive a production line at volume and robots already in homes, not just a bench with a careful operator

Minimum Requirements

• 5+ years shipping camera or imaging software in production systems: robotics, autonomous vehicles, consumer devices, or AR and VR
• Hands-on experience bringing up image sensors on embedded Linux, including V4L2, MIPI CSI-2, and the driver and device tree work that comes with it
• Demonstrated experience with camera intrinsic and extrinsic calibration, including validating calibration quality rather than trusting a solver's output
• Strong C++ in performance-critical systems, with the profiling and debugging habits to find where frames and milliseconds actually go

Preferred Skills

• Experience with ISP tuning and image quality evaluation, especially where the consumer is a perception model rather than a person
• Experience taking calibration into manufacturing: fixture and station design, cycle time, yield, and failure analysis on build data
• Familiarity with CUDA or GPU image processing and zero-copy image transport between processes
• Background in multi-camera synchronization, stereo rectification, or camera-IMU time alignment

What does a successful 1X Team Member look like

• Team members at 1X who thrive here are builders.
• They move fast, own their work completely, and treat time like it's the one thing you can't get back - because it is.
• They say what they mean, finish what they start, and hold themselves to a standard before anyone has to ask.
• We push each other to be better, and we do it with honesty and respect.

Compensation $230K - $285K Base + Equity

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Generous paid time off, company holidays, and parental leave
• 401(k) plan with company match (100% on the first 3% of contributions, 50% on the next 2%)
• Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) and Health Savings Accounts (HSA) options
• Commuter benefits (transit and parking)
• Short-term and long-term disability, and life insurance
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) for mental health, financial, and personal support
• Onsite snacks and catered lunches