At a Glance
- Tasks: Conduct cutting-edge research in computer vision and develop innovative algorithms for 3D reconstruction.
- Company: Join Niantic Spatial, a leader in physical AI and spatial intelligence.
- Benefits: Competitive salary, flexible work environment, and opportunities for professional growth.
- Other info: Dynamic team environment with opportunities to publish at top conferences.
- Why this job: Make a real impact in the future of technology while collaborating with world-class researchers.
- Qualifications: PhD or equivalent experience in computer vision, strong programming skills, and a solid research track record.
The predicted salary is between 60000 - 80000 £ per year.
About Niantic Spatial
At Niantic Spatial, we’re building the future of physical AI. Powered by a proprietary database of over 30 billion posed images, our groundbreaking mapping technology unlocks a new dimension of interaction and spatial intelligence that helps both humans and machines better understand, represent, navigate, and engage with the real environment. Our reconstruction technology captures environments with geometric accuracy and extreme detail from any standard camera, and our Visual Positioning System delivers precise positioning almost anywhere in the world. We serve customers across robotics, the public sector, and energy and industrial markets — building for the 80% of economic activity that takes place beyond our screens.
About the Role
We are looking for a Computer Vision Research Engineer to join our Research Team in London. Our team researches and builds the 3D reconstruction technology behind Niantic Spatial's platform. These pipelines turn casually captured or domain specific imagery into high-fidelity explorable 3D reconstructions. This entails anything from Structure-from-Motion through to 3D Gaussian Splatting and feed-forward models. Our team shipped 360 splatting to consumers and enterprise customers, developed the splatting tech that runs on phones, shipped multiple POCs to enterprise customers, and have innovated on countless AR technologies. Our team has published at top venues (CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, SIGGRAPH); more often than not, our papers end up in production. We're hiring a researcher to work at both ends of that pipeline. You will implement and iterate on the state-of-the-art for both academic publishing and production, regularly working on prototypes with a short turnaround into customer-facing production. You will work alongside world‑class researchers in computer vision, machine learning, graphics, and robotics to develop new approaches for large-scale spatial understanding, localization, reconstruction, scene understanding, and geospatial foundation models.
What You’ll Do
- Conduct original research in computer vision, machine learning, and spatial AI.
- Design, implement, and evaluate novel algorithms for:
- 3D reconstruction
- Neural scene representations
- 3D Gaussian Splatting
- Geometric deep learning
- Structure-from-Motion (SfM)
- Feed-forward models
- Spatial foundation models
- Collaborate with research scientists and engineers to transition promising ideas into future products.
- Develop large-scale experiments and benchmarking frameworks.
- Work directly with the realities of production with real capture conditions, real hardware constraints, and real customers.
- Publish research findings at leading conferences such as CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, or SIGGRAPH.
What You’ll Bring
- PhD in Computer Vision, Robotics, Machine Learning, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, or a closely related field. Exceptionally strong candidates with equivalent experience in industry would be considered.
- A strong research track record in 3D computer vision: reconstruction, depth estimation, novel view synthesis, SfM, SLAM, or closely related areas.
- Strong publication record at top-tier conferences such as CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, SIGGRAPH, NeurIPS, etc.
- Strong programming skills in Python and experience in PyTorch.
- Evidence that you can carry an idea from research into something real; that may be a shipped feature, a production pipeline, a widely used open-source release, or similar.
- Ability to independently drive research projects from idea generation through experimentation and publication.
Nice to Have
- Experience with classical reconstruction tooling (COLMAP etc).
- C++ or CUDA, and a feel for performance and on-device constraints.
Computer Vision Resarch Engineer employer: Niantic Spatial
At Niantic Spatial, we pride ourselves on fostering a collaborative and innovative work culture that empowers our employees to push the boundaries of technology in the realm of physical AI. Located in the vibrant city of London, our team enjoys access to cutting-edge resources and opportunities for professional growth, including publishing research at top-tier conferences and working alongside world-class experts in computer vision and machine learning. We offer a dynamic environment where creativity thrives, and every team member's contributions are valued, making us an exceptional employer for those seeking meaningful and impactful work.
