Camera Engineer in London

Helsing is a defence AI company. Our mission is to protect our democracies. We aim to achieve technological leadership, so that open societies can continue to make sovereign decisions and control their ethical standards. As democracies, we believe we have a special responsibility to be thoughtful about the development and deployment of powerful technologies like AI. We take this responsibility seriously.

We are an ambitious and committed team of engineers, AI specialists and customer-facing programme managers. We are looking for mission-driven people to join our European teams – and apply their skills to solve the most complex and impactful problems. We embrace an open and transparent culture that welcomes healthy debates on the use of technology in defence, its benefits, and its ethical implications.

The role involves owning the imaging stack that makes AI work in the field, under real conditions, against real constraints. From photon to bit, you will define the hardware architecture that feeds our AI with the highest-quality, precisely timed sensor data.

You will translate mission requirements into concrete specifications for lenses, sensors, and data pipelines. You will work inside a multidisciplinary team spanning optical physics, electrical engineering, and computer vision, and you will see your designs move from prototype to operational deployment. This is not a research role; the systems you build have real-world consequences.

The day-to-day responsibilities include:

• Defining imaging architecture, selecting lens and sensor combinations, aligning specifications with the AI team, and owning the technical trade-offs between optical performance and algorithm requirements.
• Implementing low-level logic by writing FPGA firmware to handle high-speed sensor interfaces and hardware-based synchronisation.
• Driving the manufacturing lifecycle by working directly with external partners to take designs from prototype to production, defining validation tests, and resolving integration challenges across complex opto-electronic assemblies.
• Leading hardware bring-up and debug, spending hands-on time in the lab, testing performance under varying conditions, and supporting integration into the software stack.
• Tuning image quality by analysing camera performance against application requirements and optimising designs and low-level algorithms to maximise sensor value for AI downstream.

You should apply if you have:

• A Ph.D. or M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Applied Physics, Optical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• A track record of taking complex opto-electronic systems from prototype to production.
• Practical knowledge of opto-mechanical design challenges, including thermal management for high-power sensors and mechanical mounting for optical alignment.
• A strong understanding of imaging physics: lens selection, MTF characteristics, CMOS sensor architecture, quantum efficiency, and noise sources.
• System-level synchronisation experience, including PTP, PPS, and hardware triggers such as Hsync and Vsync, to align image capture with other sensors and compute modules.
• Proficiency in C/C++ or Rust for low-level firmware development or hardware-software interface debugging.

Nice to Have:

• FPGA development experience using Verilog, SystemVerilog, VHDL or equivalent, including high-bandwidth data streams, video processing pipelines, and sensor interfaces.
• Hands-on PCB design and debug experience for high-bandwidth image sensors, with knowledge of signal integrity for MIPI CSI-2, LVDS, SLVS-EC, or similar.
• Familiarity with optical design software such as Zemax or Code V, including ray tracing, lens curvature, or custom glass specification.
• Experience writing Linux kernel drivers or working with V4L2 or similar frameworks to interface with sensors.
• Exposure to computer vision or AI pipelines and an understanding of how captured images are consumed by downstream algorithms.
• Experience designing, calibrating, and programming LWIR cameras.

Join Helsing and work with world-leading experts in their fields. Helsing’s work is important. You’ll be directly contributing to the protection of democratic countries while balancing both ethical and geopolitical concerns. The work is unique, operating in a domain that has highly unusual technical requirements and constraints, where robustness, safety, and ethical considerations are vital.

Our work frequently takes us right up to the state of the art in technical innovation, be it reinforcement learning, distributed systems, generative AI, or deployment infrastructure. The defence industry is entering the most exciting phase of the technological development curve. Advances in our field are not incremental; Helsing is part of, and often leading, historic leaps forward.

In our domain, success is a matter of order-of-magnitude improvements and novel capabilities. This means we take bets, aim high, and focus on big opportunities. Despite being a relatively young company, Helsing has already been selected for multiple significant government contracts.

We actively encourage healthy, proactive, and diverse debate internally about what we do and how we choose to do it. Teams and individual engineers are trusted (and encouraged) to practise responsible autonomy and critical thinking, and to focus on outcomes, not conformity. At Helsing, you will have a say in how we (and you!) work, the opportunity to engage on what does and doesn’t work, and to take ownership of aspects of our culture that you care deeply about.

What we offer:

• Competitive salary and VSOP options.
• Relocation support: up to €2,500 and 4 weeks temporary accommodation.
• Learning: €500/£450 yearly allowance.
• Health & wellness: gym membership and mental health support (Nilo.health).
• Social: regular company events and monthly social allowances.
• Enhanced parental leave: 22 weeks fully paid for primary caregivers & 6 weeks for secondary caregivers.
• Family support: 5 days of paid family emergency leave, 100% remote work option during pregnancy and phased return to work.
• A hands-on onboarding program (affectionately labelled “Infraduction”), in which you will be building tooling and applications to be used across the company.

Helsing is an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability or gender identity.