Perception & Tracking Engineer

Company Overview

Allen Control Systems (ACS) is a cutting-edge defense startup founded by two former Navy electrical engineers with a proven track record in robotics and software. We are developing an autonomous gun turret using advanced computer vision and control systems to precisely detect, track, and neutralize enemy drones.

With an engineering-first culture, ACS values technical excellence and innovation. Backed by our founders’ successful exits from two previous ventures acquired for a combined $180M in 2022, we are committed to ensuring that the groundbreaking technologies we develop have a real-world impact.

Position Overview

We are seeking a Perception and Tracking Engineer to join our team. This person will specialize in deep algorithmic understanding and production-grade software development for real-time multi-target inertial tracking for robotics and autonomous systems. In this role, you will design and implement both classical and modern deep learning algorithms for real-time perception algorithms that enable robots and autonomous systems to detect, track, and understand objects in dynamic environments.

You will work closely with robotics, software, and platform engineers to develop high-performance computer vision and tracking systems that operate reliably in real-world conditions and on resource-constrained hardware. This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy solving challenging perception problems, building real-time systems, and working at the intersection of machine learning, robotics, and computer vision.

We're hiring across multiple experience levels, including:

• Associate Perception & Tracking Engineer
• Perception & Tracking Engineer
• Senior Perception & Tracking Engineer
• Your title and level will be determined based on your experience, skills, and the scope of responsibility appropriate for the role.

What You'll Do:

• Design, implement, test, debug, and maintain core 3D Computer Vision based multi-object tracking algorithms and infrastructure, including measurement conditioning, data association, track correlation, propagation, track initialization/maintenance/deletion, and handling of track uncertainty.
• Develop and optimize computer vision algorithms for real-time detection and tracking of small objects in robotic and autonomous systems.
• Implement and improve object detection and multi-object tracking pipelines using modern deep learning techniques. Analyze and resolve complex tracking issues such as track fragmentation, , poor association in clutter, sensitivity to measurement quality/latency, and coordinate system challenges.
• Train, evaluate, and deploy machine learning models for perception tasks in dynamic environments.
• Design image preprocessing and feature extraction pipelines to improve model robustness and performance.
• Optimize tracking pipelines for low-latency, real-time performance on embedded hardware and/or GPUs. Profile bottlenecks and apply algorithmic or implementation improvements.
• Collaborate with robotics and software teams to integrate perception systems into autonomous platforms and real-world deployments.
• Participate in the full software development lifecycle: requirements, design, implementation, unit/integration/system testing, deployment, and maintenance. Follow strong software engineering practices and support automated testing and evaluation frameworks.
• Define tracking-specific metrics, evaluation harnesses, and test scenarios. Quantify and improve accuracy, robustness, stability, and computational efficiency.

Required Technical

Skills:

• 2-3 years of experience working with perception algorithms, robotics, or machine learning and comfortable in a role that specializes in 3D Computer Vision based tracking
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, Applied Math or related field
• Strong experience developing vision-based tracking algorithms for real-time applications
• Experience implementing object detection (YOLO, SSD, R-CNN, or similar) and classic or deep learning-based tracking algorithms (Kalman and particle filters, Byte Track, or similar)
• Solid applied math foundation in linear algebra, probability, statistics, and optimal estimation…