Junior Autonomy & Sensor Fusion Engineer

Position Overview Blue Ops is seeking a motivated Junior Autonomy & Sensor Fusion Engineer to support the development, integration, testing, and validation of advanced autonomous systems for uncrewed surface vessels (USVs).The selected candidate will work closely with senior engineering personnel on navigation systems, GNSS and GNSS-denied positioning, radar integration, sensor fusion, autonomous navigation, and AI-assisted perception.

This is a hands-on engineering position combining software development, embedded systems, robotics, and real-world maritime testing.

The ideal candidate is a technically capable junior engineer who enjoys solving complex problems, writing clean code, working with physical hardware, and learning advanced autonomy technologies.

Key Responsibilities
1. Navigation, GNSS & Positioning Systems Assist with integration and testing of GNSS/GPS receivers, high-accuracy GNSS systems, RTK-GNSS, and inertial navigation sensors.

Support development and validation of positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) systems.

Assist with GNSS-degraded and GNSS-denied navigation research and testing.

Work with IMUs, magnetometers, heading sensors, and inertial navigation systems (INS).Troubleshoot NMEA 0183, NMEA 2000, and navigation telemetry.

Help validate coordinate transformations, heading accuracy, sensor timestamps, and navigation data quality.
2. Sensor Fusion & Perception Support integration of marine radar, GNSS, IMU, cameras, and other onboard sensors.

Assist with Kalman filtering, extended Kalman filters (EKF), and basic state-estimation algorithms.

Develop Python utilities for sensor data processing, filtering, visualization, and diagnostics.

Help evaluate sensor accuracy, calibration, latency, and synchronization.

Support radar-based target detection, tracking, and classification.

Assist with automatic target recognition (ATR) and AI perception workflows.
3. Autonomous Navigation & Robotics Support development and testing of autonomous vessel navigation capabilities.

Assist with waypoint navigation, route following, heading control, and vessel state estimation.

Help implement and test PID controllers and other basic control algorithms.

Support collision-detection and collision-avoidance research, simulations, and validation.

Assist with autonomous mission behaviors, safety monitoring, and recovery procedures.

Work with ROS 2 components, messaging, telemetry, and robotic software interfaces.
4. Software Development & Integration Develop, maintain, and debug software primarily using Python, with exposure to C++.Build utilities, APIs, diagnostic tools, and automated test scripts.

Work with Linux-based development environments and NVIDIA Jetson edge-computing platforms.

Support communication protocols including CAN, TCP/IP, UDP, serial, and MQTT.Assist with ROS 2 nodes, services, topics, and system integration.

Use Git/Git Hub for version control, code reviews, and collaborative development.

Help diagnose software, networking, sensor, and hardware integration issues.
5. AI, Machine Learning & Data Processing Support development and evaluation of computer vision and machine learning components.

Assist with preparing, labeling, and validating radar and sensor datasets.

Run inference benchmarks and evaluate model accuracy and performance.

Support deployment and optimization of AI models on embedded hardware.

Develop scripts for processing sensor logs, telemetry, and experimental data.

Assist senior engineers with model evaluation, fine-tuning workflows, and technical research.
6. Testing, Validation & Field Support Participate in laboratory, simulation, dockside, and controlled vessel testing.

Collect and analyze sensor logs, GNSS data, radar recordings, and system telemetry.

Develop repeatable test procedures and document engineering results.

Assist with troubleshooting hardware and software issues during integration.

Verify software changes against defined acceptance criteria.

Support preparation of technical documentation, test reports, and engineering milestones.

Follow established safety procedures and engineering change-control processes.

Minimum Qualifications Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, or a related technical field; equivalent demonstrated technical experience considered.

Foundational proficiency in Python programming.

Familiarity with Linux development environments.

Basic understanding of GPS/GNSS, coordinating systems, and navigation…