Senior C++ Software Engineer – Camera & Sensor Systems

Job Description

General Info

This position is on-site in Budapest and requires EU residency or an existing EU work visa.

We are developing a breakthrough imaging and 3D technology platform, currently under provisional patent, built around a highly advanced imaging and analysis pipeline. This is a hands-on, senior C++ engineering role owning the capture side of that platform: the control software that drives our camera sensors, lighting hardware, and dolly/motion-control systems, and the deterministic synchronization between them. You will bring up new hardware, own frame timing and multi-device sync, and deliver raw capture data cleanly into the ingest layer of the ML pipeline. You will work shoulder to shoulder with imaging scientists, ML engineers, and the pipeline and platform engineers who consume your output. We are looking for an exceptional coder who writes highly efficient, scalable, maintainable, production-quality C++ every day and is genuinely at home close to the hardware.

Tasks

Capture Systems Development & Architecture

• Write highly efficient, scalable, and maintainable production-quality C++: clean, well-tested, and tuned for latency, jitter, and memory on demanding real-time capture workloads.
• Develop robust control software for camera sensors: exposure, gain, triggering, frame timing, ROI, and vendor SDK/driver integration.
• Build control software for lighting hardware, including illumination sequencing and its synchronization with sensor exposure.
• Develop dolly and motion-control software: trajectory execution, positional feedback, and tight coordination between motion events and capture events.
• Own deterministic multi-device synchronization and timestamping across sensors, illumination, and motion, including hardware triggering and clock discipline.
• Deliver capture output into the pipeline ingest layer: buffer and DMA management, zero-copy paths where possible, and stable, versioned data contracts with the ML pipeline team.
• Bring up new hardware, build the instrumentation and diagnostics to characterize it, and implement geometric and photometric calibration routines.
• Contribute to architecture decisions across the capture stack, balancing raw performance against long-term maintainability and scalability.
• Profile, benchmark, and optimize hot paths, hunting down bottlenecks and eliminating them at the algorithmic and systems level.

Requirements

Education & Experience

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a closely related field. Exceptional Bachelor’s-level candidates with outstanding demonstrated depth will also be considered.
• Around 5–8 years of hands-on, current professional experience writing production C++, with a proven track record of shipping hardware-facing systems end to end. We want engineers who are still deep in the code every day.
• Expert-level, up-to-date command of modern C++ (C++17/20): highly efficient, optimized, production-grade code of the highest quality and reliability, with strong command of memory management, concurrency, and performance tuning.
• Demonstrated experience with device control and real-time I/O: camera or sensor SDKs, drivers, and hardware interfaces (e.g. USB3 Vision, GigE Vision, CoaXPress, MIPI CSI-2, serial, GPIO, trigger lines).
• Working knowledge of image sensor behavior and capture pipelines: raw formats, exposure and gain control, frame timing, and multi-camera synchronization.
• Strong command of Linux systems programming as it affects real-time behavior: threading, scheduling, interrupt and buffer management, and latency measurement.
• Comfortable working close to the hardware and up the stack to the pipeline boundary, defining and maintaining the interfaces the ML systems consume.

Skills & Competencies

• Exceptional problem-solving ability and systems thinking, able to decompose complex, novel problems and reason rigorously about performance, correctness, and trade-offs.
• Comfort operating in a confidential, research-driven, fast-moving environment where requirements evolve quickly.
• Ability to collaborate effectively across imaging science, ML, hardware, and product teams, and to negotiate clean interfaces with the pipeline side of the stack.
• Genuine passion for imaging, optics, and high-performance real-time systems, with the drive to go deep and stay current with the state of the art.
• High ownership, sharp attention to detail, adaptability, and intellectual curiosity.

Additional Preferred Experience

• Experience in early-stage startup or R&D / innovation-lab environments, delivering novel products under ambiguity.
• Track record of delivering first-of-its-kind products or platforms.
• Motion control experience: stepper/servo drives, gantry or dolly systems, CNC-style controllers, or robotics kinematics.
• Familiarity with machine-vision SDKs and standards (e.g. GenICam/GenTL, Basler pylon, FLIR Spinnaker, Allied Vision Vimba).
• Experience with controlled illumination: LED driver control, strobing, structured or multispectral lighting.
• Experience with camera calibration and colorimetry, including geometric and photometric characterization.
• Familiarity with GPU programming (e.g. CUDA), computer vision, or FPGA-assisted capture paths.
• Candidates must be eligible to work in Hungary, with fluent English, both written and spoken.

Compensation

In accordance with Hungary’s implementation of the EU Pay Transparency Directive (Directive (EU) 2023/970):

• Salary range: HUF 2,000,000 – HUF 2,500,000 gross per month, depending on experience and demonstrated technical depth.
• Discretionary performance bonus, with details discussed with shortlisted candidates.

Compensation decisions are made on the basis of objective, gender-neutral criteria, including relevant experience, technical skills, scope of responsibility, and demonstrated performance. The Company does not request salary history during the recruitment process.