Camera Simulation Engineer

Cupertino, California, United States Hardware

Do you love taking on big challenges that require exceptionally creative solutions? Do you deeply understand how an incredible camera experience should work? As part of our Camera Technologies group, you’ll help design the innovative technology that allows each generation of Apple products to produce photos even more incredible than the last. You’ll design and develop groundbreaking ideas for everything involved in our camera systems, from sensor to lens.

You’ll collaborate with teams across Apple to research, design, develop, test, and qualify camera hardware for Apple products. Together, we’ll craft a magical photography experience that redefines what millions of customers can expect from their cameras.

The Camera Modeling & Simulation team, a part of the Camera Hardware and Depth Team, develops novel metrology, calibration, and simulation processes to enable the implementation and architecture of machine-vision-driven and photographic experiences. We collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to define hardware design specifications and key performance metrics to deliver seamless user experiences. The team is seeking an expert in imaging, optical system design, or computer vision with broad skills to help develop next-generation, high-throughput simulation frameworks to guide the design and architecture of next generation products.

As a Modeling & Simulation Engineer on the Camera & Depth Architecture team, you will design, develop, and maintain high-throughput simulation frameworks to generate large volumes of synthetic imagery on-demand, and build and refine models of camera systems—from sensor to lens—to simulate real-world imaging performance.

• Develop models and conduct simulation studies to characterize end-to-end performance (hardware and software) and guide product architecture decisions.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define hardware design specifications and key performance metrics for photographic and machine-vision applications.
• Partner with metrology and calibration teams to ensure simulation accuracy reflects real-world hardware behavior and communicate findings and recommendations to stakeholders across hardware, software, and product teams and manage project deliverables and schedules to meet commitments.

• BS and a minimum of 10+ years relevant industry experience in Optics, Physics, Electrical Engineering or related field.
• Programming experience in at least one of the coding languages:
  Python, C, C++ or Matlab.
• Experience with one or more of the following:
  Optics: imaging system design, optical design, computational imaging, or similar.

• MS/PhD degree in Optics, Physics, Electrical Engineering or related field and relevant industry experience in Optics, optical systems modeling & simulation,
• Experience in project management and/or driving projects independently in ambiguous problem spaces.
• Published research in imaging, computational photography, or related fields.
• Experience with one or more of diffraction, ray tracing, beam propagation, radiometry, sensor physics.
• Experience with synthetic data generation for ML training pipelines, model optimization and/or deployment, related to imaging and data analyses.
• Data analysis from manufacturing sources, validation and correlation against real hardware.
• Distributed processing / simulations at scale.
• Experience with algorithms for image quality enhancement.

At Apple, base pay is one part of our total compensation package and is determined within a range. This provides the opportunity to progress as you grow and develop within a role. The base pay range for this role is between $184,700 and $324,800, and…