Senior Engineer, Sensor Platform

We are looking for a Senior Engineer, Sensor Platform to join our Perception team in Helsinki. Everything our perception models learn, they learn from what our research vehicles and rigs record. If the sensors are not synchronized, calibrated and trusted, the work downstream stalls. This role owns that platform end to end, from choosing the sensors to the versioned dataset the team trains on.

WHY DISTANCE?

At Distance Technologies, the problem we're solving is simple to state and hard to solve: the amount of data in the world is endless, but human capacity is not. We are building a fundamentally new perception layer between humans and machines, transforming transparent surfaces into interfaces unlike the world has ever seen. Think of the windscreen of a car, the visor of a helmet, or a sight device, each becoming a new front-end for AI. The way we turn bits and atoms into expanded human perception is protected by over 50 granted international patent families. We build it for two demanding worlds: defense and automotive. And we build it from a single foundation fusing software, hardware and computational optics.

There are over 50 of us today, with decade-long experience building world's best products, optics, and open-source operating systems. We partner and build with globally leading companies like KIA, FORVIA HELLA, Supacat, and Galvion, and we were Google Ventures' first investment in Finland. What we're building is hard, and will fundamentally change how we operate and see the world, and that's exactly why we seek exceptional people who enjoy building things never seen before.

THE ROLE

You own the sensor platform on our research vehicles and rigs, and every recording that comes off it. You design, specify and validate the setup, and the hardware team builds and maintains it to your guidance. That covers:

• Picking and proving the sensors: selecting and characterizing lidar, thermal, visible/NIR and IMU/INS, and understanding the physical effects that decide whether the data is any good.

• The recording setup: designing the sensing network and recording hardware, USB/GMSL/Ethernet cameras, switches and data recorders.

• Time synchronization: making sure every sensor shares the same clock so the data lines up.

• Calibration: multi-sensor calibration, and the acceptance thresholds that say when a calibration is good enough to trust.

• The dataset: a versioned store for the recordings, with clear provenance, so anyone can see where a piece of data came from.

• Running collections: data collection projects across automotive, defense and the rest of the perception team's work.

You take over data collection and multi-sensor calibration from the people doing it today, and act as a reviewer on pull requests and reports. This is a senior, hands-on role. Routine drives go to a part-time driver hired separately, against acceptance criteria that you set.

WHAT'S IN IT FOR YOU?

Technical ownership of the coolest car in Finland. You own the sensor platform on it, end to end. You'll see it in the interviews!

Work that matters for safety. The data you collect feeds systems whose whole point is keeping people safer.

A hard problem the whole product leans on. Getting data collection right is genuinely complex, and a lot of what the perception team builds depends on it. If the recordings are off, nothing downstream works.

Real ownership from day one. This is a new role. Data collection is already happening, but nobody owns it as their main job. You take it on, put it on a solid footing, and shape where it goes from here.

OUR EXPECTATIONS

You are a senior engineer who owns the platform, sets the standard for what good data looks like, and can turn what the team needs into sensor and hardware requirements. You back your decisions with measurement, and you validate the setup under real-world conditions, not just on the bench.

We're looking for knowledge and hands-on experience across all of the following:

• Strong software engineering skills in Python and/or C++.

• Strong understanding of sensor technology & data quality and the physical effects that drive it, including vibration, thermal expansion, sensor thermal dynamics, focus, calibration, synchronization, and mechanical tolerances.

• Intrinsics and extrinsics calibration, ideally including multi-sensor/multi-modal calibration (e.g. lidar, thermal, radar, visible/NIR/SWIR).

• Understanding of the data needs of ML systems, including dataset quality, coverage, bias, edge cases, ground truth, and how sensor characteristics propagate into model performance.

Communication counts as much as the engineering here, inside the team and across it. You'll coordinate upgrades with the hardware team and make sensor recommendations to the programs that rely on your data, so you're comfortable explaining your reasoning to people outside perception too.

It's a plus, though not expected, if you bring one or more of the following: multi-sensor recording systems (e.g. ROS2, rosbag, MCAP); machine vision cameras and networking (e.g. GigE Vision, GenICam, 10GigE, PoE); time synchronization for multi-sensor setups (PTP, PPS, hardware triggers, exposure timestamps); versioned datasets and cloud pipelines (e.g. GCS); IMU calibration (e.g. Kalibr, LI-init); frame grabbers, CAN bus and automotive data recorders; or experience with automotive or robotics data collection vehicles.

This role is based at our Helsinki HQ and is mostly onsite, since the work happens at the physical hardware. We would expect around four days a week at the HQ. Strong English is essential, Finnish is not required. B-class driver's license is seen beneficial. We support relocation for the right person.

DID WE GET YOU INTERESTED?

Apply via the application form! Our recruitment process includes 2-3 discussions with the team. If you want to learn more about the position, reach out to our recruiter, Joel Kinnunen, at [email protected]. Kindly note that, for data privacy reasons, we are not able to process applications sent via email.