Staff Systems Engineer - Camera

1X • San Carlos, CA

1d • $230,000 - $300,000

About The Position

1X is hiring a Staff Systems Engineer for its Core team, which builds and owns the core C++ infrastructure used across NEO, including sensor pipelines, motor control interfaces, networking, inter-process communication, and foundational libraries. The team’s code runs on robot hardware and its correctness and performance affect what other teams can build and ship.

The role owns NEO’s camera stack end to end, from selecting the sensor, lens, and module through delivering calibrated and rectified frames to perception models. This critical-path work includes camera hardware selection and vendor engagement, production-ready camera pipelines, image tuning for machine perception in real-world lighting, and calibration processes that work on manufacturing lines and across robots deployed in homes.

The successful candidate is a builder who moves quickly, takes full ownership, communicates honestly, finishes what they start, and holds themselves and teammates to high standards with respect.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of experience shipping camera or imaging software in production systems, such as robotics, autonomous vehicles, consumer devices, or AR/VR.
• Hands-on experience bringing up image sensors on embedded Linux, including V4L2, MIPI CSI-2, and associated driver and device-tree work.
• Demonstrated experience with camera intrinsic and extrinsic calibration, including validating calibration quality rather than relying solely on a solver’s output.
• Strong C++ skills in performance-critical systems, with profiling and debugging experience to identify frame and latency bottlenecks.
• Deep understanding of camera systems, including sensors, optics, ISP, and image processing and transport through a robotics stack.
• Experience debugging hardware boundaries and interfaces such as MIPI CSI-2, serializer/deserializer links, I2C, PoE, and power and clock sequencing.
• Ability to reason about calibration tolerances, uncertainty, and how calibration errors affect perception.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with ISP tuning and image-quality evaluation, particularly when images are consumed by perception models.
• Experience bringing calibration into manufacturing, including fixture and station design, cycle time, yield, and build-data failure analysis.
• 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.

Responsibilities

• Define camera sensor, lens, and module requirements with hardware and perception teams; conduct trade studies, engage vendors, and bring selected hardware up on real systems.
• Deliver a production-ready camera pipeline, including sensor drivers, multi-camera synchronization and timestamping, and frame delivery that meets latency budgets without dropped frames or unstable timestamps.
• Tune exposure, white balance, and dynamic range for perception-model accuracy in real homes, including low-light and hard-backlight conditions.
• Develop and operationalize camera intrinsic and extrinsic calibration on the production line within cycle-time requirements; automate validation, monitor fleet drift, and enable field recovery.
• Debug camera hardware interfaces and system behavior, including dropped frames, timestamp instability, and bandwidth limitations.
• Build calibration and diagnostic systems that scale across production and robots deployed in homes.

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 and 50% on the next 2%.
• Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) and Health Savings Accounts (HSA) options.
• Commuter benefits for transit and parking.
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance and life insurance.
• Employee Assistance Program for mental health, financial, and personal support.
• Onsite snacks and catered lunches.
• Equity.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed