Perception Engineer

Job Opportunity At General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc.

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI), an affiliate of General Atomics, is a world leader in proven, reliable remotely piloted aircraft and tactical reconnaissance radars, as well as advanced high-resolution surveillance systems. Join our Perception group to design and implement a real-time Dynamic Environment Model (DEM) to support multi-sensor fusion, track management, and sensor resource management across advanced unmanned systems. This role will design and implement the perception and fusion infrastructure that aggregates radar, EO/IR, ESM, and other sensor inputs into a coherent, uncertainty-aware spatiotemporal world model, enabling high-confidence situational awareness and autonomous decision-making. This role focuses on real-time systems, probabilistic fusion, tracking, data structures, and performance-critical C++.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Build and optimize real-time DEM data structures:
• Spatiotemporal voxel grids / occupancy & belief fields
• Confidence, decay, and provenance tracking
• Implement deterministic fusion + perception infrastructure:
• Sensor synchronization, buffering, time alignment, calibration
• Real-time data association and multi-sensor integration
• Support tracking engineers implementing IMM-EKF/UKF, JPDA, and data association models
• Design and maintain low-latency transport (ZMQ/DDS/ROS2, shared memory, lock-free queues)
• Develop tools for:
• Replay and Monte-Carlo evaluation
• Field test debug & metrics
• Live introspection and visualization of DEM states & tracks
• Collaboration:
• Work closely with tracking & state estimation engineers
• ML engineers building feature and occupancy networks
• Autonomy stack and mission systems teams
• Contribute to sim-to-real validation

Job Qualifications:

• Typically requires a bachelors, masters degree or PhD in computer science, engineering, mathematics, or a related technical discipline from an accredited institution and progressive machine learning engineering experience as follows; five or more years of experience with a bachelors degree or three or more years of experience with a masters degree. May substitute equivalent machine learning engineer experience in lieu of education.
• Strong C++ and Python
• Experience with: multi-sensor fusion (IR/Radar/ESM ideal), real-time systems, concurrency, memory optimization, Kalman-family filters and uncertainty modeling
• Familiarity with: JPDA / multi-target tracking frameworks, DDS / ZMQ / ROS2 or similar messaging, spatiotemporal mapping or occupancy grid systems, STAP/DPCA basics or RF signal chain awareness
• Ability to obtain and maintain a DOD security clearance required

Salary: $81,080 - $141,650

Travel Percentage Required: 0 - 25

Relocation Assistance Provided: Not Provided

US Citizenship Required? Yes

Clearance Required? Desired

Clearance Level: Mid-Level (3-7 years) Workstyle: Hybrid

General Atomics is committed to hiring and retaining a diverse workforce. We are an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and will consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, religious creed, ancestry, gender, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation, transitioning status, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, age, genetic information, military and veteran status, marital status, medical condition, mental disability, physical disability, or any other basis protected by local, state, or federal law. EEO is the law. We also prohibit compensation discrimination under all applicable laws.