Embedded Camera and Video Systems Engineer
SiFly · Santa Clara · onsite
EMBEDDED CAMERA & VIDEO SYSTEMS ENGINEER
APPLICATIONS · FULL-TIME · ON-SITE — SANTA CLARA, CA
ABOUT SIFLY AVIATION
At SiFly, we’re building a new category of aircraft: vertical-takeoff, long-endurance drones that deliver helicopter-level performance at drone economics. After thousands of flight tests and years of engineering, our NDAA-compliant platform flies more than 2 hours in hover or 3 hours in forward flight on a single charge — matching the capability of traditional helicopters at a fraction of their cost and operational burden. We merge aerial robotics, perception, and onboard intelligence to cut complexity and minimize human intervention, and our unique approach to communications and networking unlocks remote operations from day one. It’s an ambitious mission, and we’re a small team that moves fast.
We are looking for a highly capable engineer who can contribute across embedded development, real-time processing, and system integration. The role requires both depth in programming and algorithms and breadth across hardware and software domains — you will work on everything from firmware on microcontrollers to high-level applications that handle video, communication, control, and the interpretation of complex sensor data.
This is a role with real ownership rather than a specification to implement. Much of the work starts as a question nobody has answered yet — why a measurement drifts, whether a feature is achievable inside the latency budget, what the camera is really doing at the edge of its range — and ends as something that flies. If you are equally happy in a datasheet, in an estimator, and on a field-test bench, you will find plenty of room here.
THE ROLE
You will build the software between the sensors and the product: firmware on constrained hardware, the signal processing and estimation that turn raw sensor output into something trustworthy, and the camera, video, and telemetry paths that carry it with low latency and predictable behaviour. Along the way you will characterize and calibrate image sensors, fuse sensors that disagree with each other, and chase problems across the hardware, firmware, and software layers until they have an actual cause.
You will work closely with the rest of the applications team, the embedded platform and firmware engineers whose interfaces you build on, the flight-software team, and the hardware engineers here in Santa Clara — designing the architecture together, testing in the field, and iterating quickly on what the aircraft actually does rather than what it was supposed to do.
WHAT YOU’LL DO
- Write real-time firmware. Design and implement firmware for real-time systems, ensuring robustness and performance on constrained hardware.
- Apply signal processing, imaging, and estimation. Use techniques from digital signal processing, image processing, and estimation theory to extract information, improve performance, and enable advanced features.
- Fuse the sensors. Combine information from multiple sensors to improve reliability and accuracy in dynamic environments — including when they disagree.
- Own the camera behaviour. Work with image sensors and their parameters — exposure, shutter speed, ISO, and focal characteristics — and apply calibration methods to achieve consistent, repeatable results across units and conditions.
- Build the video and data paths. Create efficient pathways for video, telemetry, and sensor data, with an emphasis on low latency, stability, and clarity of output.
- Integrate complete systems. Connect and coordinate sensors, actuators, and communication interfaces into complete, working systems rather than isolated components.
- Debug across the whole stack. Investigate and solve issues that arise across the hardware, firmware, and software layers, and drive them to root cause rather than to a workaround.
- Take ideas from prototype to product. Rapidly validate concepts, then refine them into reliable, maintainable solutions that other engineers can build on.
- Make results legible. Develop clear ways to present complex measurements and results for debugging, calibration, and system evaluation — so the team can reason about the data, not just look at it.
- Work in the field. Collaborate closely with the team to design architecture, test on real aircraft, and iterate quickly on what you learn there.
REQUIRED EXPERIENCE
- Embedded and real-time programming. Demonstrated strength in embedded systems programming in C, C++, and Python, and in real-time development on constrained hardware.
- Camera and imaging depth. Hands-on experience bringing up and tuning image sensors — sensor configuration, exposure and gain control, MIPI CSI interfaces, ISP behaviour, and calibration of intrinsic parameters — and the judgment to tell a sensor problem from a software one.
- Video and data pipelines. Practical experience building low-latency video and telemetry paths on embedded hardware, including encoding, buffering, and transport, and measuring latency rather than estimating it.
- Algorithms and theory. Solid understanding of digital signal processing, image processing, and sensor-fusion and estimation principles, and the ability to design and optimize algorithms for real-time execution.
- Sensor integration. Experience integrating sensors, actuators, and communication modules, including calibration, alignment, and time synchronization.
- System-level debugging. Practical expertise in debugging, profiling, and solving problems that cross component boundaries — where the answer is rarely in the layer where the symptom appeared.
- Breadth and ownership. Comfort working across disciplines and taking ownership of technical challenges end-to-end, from first investigation through to something maintainable.
- Communication. Strong written and verbal communication — able to coordinate clearly with distributed engineering teams across the United States and Europe.
NICE TO HAVE
- Robotics, drones, or other real-time mechatronic systems.
- GStreamer, V4L2, or libcamera, and ISP tuning workflows.
- H.264 and HEVC encoding and low-latency streaming transports.
- Multi-camera or stereo rigs and time synchronization across sensors.
- Gimbal or electro-optical payload integration.
- GPU- or accelerator-based image processing.
- Deploying systems to field environments and adapting them under real-world conditions.
- Camera calibration tooling, including focal length, distortion, and alignment workflows.
- Autopilot and robotics interfaces.
- UAV, automotive, or other safety-relevant embedded experience.
WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE
- Features move from idea to something flying on real aircraft without stalling in the gap between prototype and product.
- Cameras behave consistently across units, temperatures, and lighting — calibrated, characterized, and understood rather than tuned by feel.
- Video, telemetry, and sensor data arrive with latency and stability that are measured and held to, not hoped for.
- Sensor outputs are trusted well enough that the rest of engineering builds on them without hedging.
- Problems that cross hardware, firmware, and software boundaries get an owner and a root cause rather than being passed around.
- Calibration and evaluation are repeatable processes with tooling behind them, not one-off efforts that depend on who ran them.
COMPENSATION & LOGISTICS
- Gross salary range: $120K–$150K.
- Job type: Full-time.
- Location: On-site in Santa Clara, California — working closely with our engineering teams in Europe.
SiFly Aviation is an equal-opportunity employer.