Senior Engineer, Sensor Platform

About the role

We are looking for a Senior Engineer, Sensor Platform to join our Perception team in Helsinki. Everything our perception models learn, they learn from what our research vehicles and rigs record. If the sensors are not synchronized, calibrated and trusted, the work downstream stalls. This role owns that platform end to end, from choosing the sensors to the versioned dataset the team trains on.

WHY DISTANCE?

At Distance Technologies, the problem we're solving is simple to state and hard to solve: the amount of data in the world is endless, but human capacity is not. We are building a fundamentally new perception layer between humans and machines, transforming transparent surfaces into interfaces unlike the world has ever seen. Think of the windscreen of a car, the visor of a helmet, or a sight device, each becoming a new front-end for AI. The way we turn bits and atoms into expanded human perception is protected by over 50 granted international patent families. We build it for two demanding worlds: defense and automotive. And we build it from a single foundation fusing software, hardware and computational optics.

There are over 50 of us today, with decade-long experience building world's best products, optics, and open-source operating systems. We partner and build with globally leading companies like KIA https://distance.tech/news/distance-announces-collaboration-with-kia-integrating-new-panoramic-lightfield-hud-into-the-kia-vision-meta-turismo-concept-car, FORVIA HELLA https://distance.tech/news/forvia-hella-invests-in-distance-technologies-and-enters-strategic-development-partnership-to-accelerate-industry-leading-mirrorless-3d-ar-hud-development, Supacat https://distance.tech/news/supacat-and-distance-technologies-sign-framework-agreement-to-enable-aerospace-grade-hud-capability-across-the-entire-supacat-hmt-ground-vehicle-platform, and Galvion https://distance.tech/news/galvion-and-distance-collaborate-on-advanced-helmet-systems-with-distances-computational-optics-and-acuity-os, and we were Google Ventures' first investment in Finland. What we're building is hard, and will fundamentally change how we operate and see the world, and that's exactly why we seek exceptional people who enjoy building things never seen before.

THE ROLE

You own the sensor platform on our research vehicles and rigs, and every recording that comes off it. You design, specify and validate the setup, and the hardware team builds and maintains it to your guidance. That covers:

- Picking and proving the sensors: selecting and characterizing lidar, thermal, visible/NIR and IMU/INS, and understanding the physical effects that decide whether the data is any good.

- The recording setup: designing the sensing network and recording hardware, USB/GMSL/Ethernet cameras, switches and data recorders.

- Time synchronization: making sure every sensor shares the same clock so the data lines up.

- Calibration: multi-sensor calibration, and the acceptance thresholds that say when a calibration is good enough to trust.