Optics & Camera Engineering Lead

The role

The Optics & Camera Engineering Lead will own the imaging stack end to end, including sensor and lens selection, optical requirements, and vendor programs. This person will collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver performant, scalable, and validated camera and optical systems.

What you will do

• Select sensors and lenses
• Evaluate and select image sensors for each product
• Select off-the-shelf lenses or specify custom designs
• Evaluate and select the ISP architecture
• Benchmark sensor and lens candidates in the lab and the field
• Translate customer use cases and CV/ML performance into camera requirements
• Run coverage and range trade studies
• Define MTF, aperture, distortion, relative illumination, stray light and NIR focus targets
• Design and run real-world field test campaigns
• Own optical performance specifications for fixed, multi-camera, panoramic and PTZ products

Required qualifications

• 8+ years in optical, imaging or camera systems engineering
• Multiple camera products shipped to volume production
• Fluency across the stack, from how image quality affects CV/ML and the end user down to lens design, mechanics and test
• Deep knowledge of image sensors, lens design and the trade-offs among resolution, FOV, F-number, MTF, aberrations, depth of focus and thermal stability
• Hands-on optical simulation with Zemax OpticStudio, CODE V or similar
• A track record specifying off-the-shelf and custom lenses with suppliers
• Athermalization experience covering both mechanical design and optical performance across temperature
• Experience designing optical test equipment and running test campaigns
• Experience with NIR imaging and active illumination, as well as L/M/SWIR systems
• Experience taking hardware through NPI with contract manufacturers or ODM/JDM partners
• Clear communication of optical trade-offs to software, business and customer-facing teams

Nice to have

• Outdoor, automotive or security camera experience, including sealing, condensation, window cleaning and environmental qualification
• Active alignment and high-volume camera module manufacturing
• PTZ, zoom/focus optics, panoramic or multi-camera systems, and camera calibration for computer vision
• EO/IR (thermal) imaging
• GMSL/FPD-Link camera interfaces and ISP tuning
• Laser illumination and eye-safety certification
• Experience leading engineers and cross-functional technical programs

About the company

Specter's mission is to help automate the physical world. They build video sensors with state-of-the-art AI agents that detect and reason about physical activity captured on camera.