Job Description
Salary: $140,000 - 180,000 per year Requirements:
- Experience developing complete camera and imaging systems, from sensor through downstream consumer
- Working knowledge of image-processing pipelines, including debayering, calibration, and correction, and CUDA or other GPU-accelerated processing
- Experience with optical calibration and characterization, including distortion modeling, vignetting correction, and MTF or sharpness measurement, and implementing related pipeline corrections
- Familiarity with motion and temporal compensation techniques such as registration, stabilization, and temporal filtering for imaging from moving platforms
- At least 5 years of embedded firmware development in C/C++ for embedded Linux, bare-metal, or RTOS systems
- Hands-on experience deploying software on NVIDIA Jetson or comparable embedded Linux/SoC platforms
- Deep experience transferring high-rate data over PCIe, including drivers, DMA, and endpoint or root-complex operation
- Strong grounding in networking, data routing, and command-and-control infrastructure
- Strong hardware debugging skills and ability to work from schematics
- Preferred: IR or thermal imaging, including non-uniformity correction and radiometric calibration
- Preferred: GStreamer, V4L2, or other imaging and video pipeline frameworks
- Preferred: Computational imaging, such as super-resolution, stacking, or HDR
- Preferred: Defense imagery and metadata standards, including MISB/KLV or STANAG, or defense and mission-critical development experience
- Preferred: FPGA workflows or high-speed serial interfaces such as SerDes, Aurora, or MIPI
- Preferred: Experience with optics and optical hardware
- Preferred: Multi-sensor and multispectral fusion, including co-registering and combining imagery across sensors and bands
- Must be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident
- Must be able to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance; an active clearance is a plus
- Must live near Denver, Colorado, or be willing to relocate; this is an onsite role at our Denver headquarters
- Must be able to travel for field events, exercises, and customer engagements
Responsibilities: - Lead embedded firmware for our EO and IR payloads, including sensor bring-up, driver development, and edge computing on NVIDIA Jetson platforms
- Integrate cameras and sensors over PCIe, MIPI/CSI, and USB, and develop board-support packages for custom carrier boards, system-on-modules, and companion microcontrollers
- Own the CUDA-based L0 image-processing pipeline at the edge, applying debayering, white balance, gamma, and camera and lens correction to raw frames before encoding
- Develop IR processing, including non-uniformity correction, bad-pixel replacement, and radiometric calibration
- Build multi-frame super-resolution and related computational imaging capabilities
- Implement KLV/MISB imagery metadata so every frame includes accurate pointing, position, and time information
- Design high-throughput vehicle data paths, particularly PCIe, and routing infrastructure for imagery, telemetry, and command-and-control across satellite, tactical-radio, and IP links
- Optimize latency, throughput, and determinism while balancing pipeline computation with onboard machine-learning workloads using shared CUDA resources
- Connect payload firmware with the gimbal and motion-control stack, using pointing and autonomy commands from the broader payload software architecture
- Develop and maintain EO/IR optical calibrations, including lens-distortion modeling, vignetting and flat-field correction, and MTF or sharpness characterization, to ensure repeatable image-quality measurement across cameras and flights
- Implement motion and temporal compensation, including frame-to-frame registration, stabilization, and temporal filtering, to improve imagery from a moving platform
- Support field events, exercises, and customer engagements
Technologies: - CUDA
- Embedded
- FPGA
- Firmware
- Hardware
- Support
- Linux
- PCIe
- Security
- Architect
- C++
More:
Urban Sky is a venture-backed aerospace startup working to make routine access to the stratosphere possible. We design, build, operate, and sell stratospheric balloon systems, with data applications including real-time wildfire monitoring and urban mapping. Our technology is also used by government customers, including NASA and the Department of War, and our flight vehicles reach the stratosphere weekly. Our small, supportive team includes engineers, makers, developers, and doers, and we value candor, inclusion, respect, and empowerment. We are building the next chapter of stratospheric history in Denver and Texas. This is a full-time, salaried, onsite Senior Embedded Imaging Software Engineer position at our Denver headquarters. The annual pay range is $140,000–$180,000. Benefits include stock options, medical, vision and dental coverage, flexible paid time off, and a cell phone stipend. We are an equal opportunity employer.
last updated 39 week of 2026
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