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Salary: USD 150,000 - 200,000 / annual
Overview.ai is deploying cutting-edge AI computer vision systems to manufacturing, solving inspection problems that traditional machine vision cannot address. The company operates a full-stack platform: GPU-powered cameras on production lines, edge inference, and a fleet management platform for worldwide deployments.
You will own complex vision applications from feasibility through production deployment, serving as the technical expert for optics, lighting, image acquisition, and inspection performance. This is a hands-on role combining lab work in San Francisco with direct customer engagement on real manufacturing challenges.
Key responsibilities include:
- Leading advanced vision application development: feasibility studies, proof-of-concept testing, and technical validation for complex industrial inspection.
- Optics and lighting design: selecting, configuring, and optimizing cameras, lenses, lighting, filters, and optical components.
- Technical ownership of the SF lab: driving vision experimentation, testing standards, hardware evaluation, and application development.
- Inspection performance optimization: troubleshooting image quality, environmental variability, false rejects, and consistency issues.
- AI vision workflows: image collection, labeling, model training, and evaluation to optimize AI-based inspection.
- Customer application support: partnering with customers and field teams to troubleshoot vision challenges and ensure successful production-line deployment.
- Technology evaluation: assessing emerging vision technologies and recommending hardware and capability improvements.
- Technical leadership: mentoring less experienced engineers, establishing best practices, and providing guidance across teams.
- Cross-functional collaboration: working with Product and Engineering to translate application challenges into product improvements.
You will bridge traditional machine vision fundamentals with next-generation AI-powered inspection, working directly with cameras, lenses, lighting, real customer parts, and production environments.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 5+ years of hands-on experience in industrial machine vision, vision applications engineering, or optical inspection systems.
- Deep understanding of machine vision fundamentals: optics, lenses, lighting, sensors, image acquisition, and camera configuration.
- Proven experience designing, building, and optimizing industrial vision systems for real manufacturing applications.
- Strong understanding of lens selection, field of view, working distance, depth of field, resolution, and optical trade-offs.
- Experience with advanced lighting techniques and solving challenging image acquisition problems.
- Demonstrated ability to independently lead vision feasibility studies and proof-of-concept projects.
- Experience troubleshooting inspection performance in production environments.
- Familiarity with traditional machine vision tools and inspection techniques.
- Working knowledge of AI-based vision: classification, object detection, segmentation, and model evaluation.
- Strong technical communication skills: documenting findings and explaining technical trade-offs to customers and internal teams.
- Comfortable working directly with hardware, running experiments, and solving problems independently.
- Based in the San Francisco Bay Area and able to work primarily from the SF office.
STRONG PREFERENCES:
- Experience with deep learning-based industrial inspection.
- Familiarity with telecentric optics, advanced lighting configurations, and precision inspection.
- Experience with high-speed production lines, challenging defect detection, or variable manufacturing environments.
- Exposure to PLCs, industrial automation, triggering, and production-line integration.
- Experience working directly with manufacturing customers.
- Experience mentoring engineers or serving as a technical subject matter expert.
