Wardstone (YC F25) · 1 month ago
Sensing & Perception Engineer
Los Angeles, CA
Full-time
Onsite
Mid Level
$100K/yr - $160K/yrWardstone is a company focused on developing advanced sensing systems for vehicle guidance. The Sensing and Perception Engineer will be responsible for integrating sensors and building real-time tracking systems, working closely with the founders to ensure high-performance perception systems are delivered for hardware applications.
AerospaceMilitaryNational Security
No H1B
U.S. Citizen Only
Responsibilities
Integrate sensor modules into avionics architecture
Own sensor selection, FOV analysis, lensing, NUC, calibration workflows, and driver integration
Develop high-reliability camera interfaces: SPI/I2C, MIPI, USB3, Ethernet, GMSL, or custom buses
Build perception pipelines capable of tracking high-speed objects with extremely low latency
Implement target detection, centroid extraction, filtering, gating, and motion-compensation algorithms
Develop robust tracking under noise, flare, thermal clutter, high dynamic range, and glint effects
Fuse IR/EO data with IMU, GPS, and onboard state estimators
Work with controls engineers to build perception-to-guidance interfaces for closed loop control
Build EKF/UKF filters, temporal alignment, and prediction modules
Design sensor test rigs: hot/cold targets, blackbody references, collimators, high-G mounts
Conduct hardware-in-the-loop tests with simulated targets, scene generators, and flight dynamics models
Collect, label, and analyze high-speed footage from ground+flight experiments, HAB flights, and tracking tests
Stress-test perception under temperature, vibration, and shock conditions
Qualification
Required
B.S. in EE, CS, Physics, Robotics, or similar
Strong experience with IR/EO camera systems, Radar, imaging physics, calibration, and noise modeling
Deep proficiency in computer vision (OpenCV, NumPy, SciPy, C++/Python)
Experience implementing real-time detection and tracking algorithms
Understanding of signal processing, filtering, sensor fusion, and coordinate transforms
Hands-on testing experience using thermal cameras, radar, calibration targets, or optical equipment
US CITIZENSHIP REQUIRED
Preferred
Experience working with LWIR sensors (FLIR Boson/Tau, ULIS, Teledyne, etc.) or Radar Units
Background in missile seekers, UAV tracking, air-to-air systems, or autonomous robotics under high speed
Experience with GPU acceleration (CUDA, TensorRT), embedded systems, or FPGA-based vision pipelines
Familiarity with optical modeling, lens design, radiometry, and atmospheric attenuation
Knowledge of IR scene modeling, signature tracking, or synthetic target generation
Experience with high-dynamic-range thermal environments or high-G mount design
Exposure to defense/aerospace sensor standards or MIL-STD environments
Company
Wardstone (YC F25)
Wardstone is a space defense-tech company developing next-generation capabilities to protect the United States and its allies from missiles and other space-based threats.
Founded in 2025
2-10 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Early StageTotal Funding
$0.5MKey Investors
Y Combinator
2025-12-03Pre Seed· $0.5M
Leadership Team
Sebastian Fischer
Chief Executive Officer
Tobias Fischer
Chief Technical Officer
Company data provided by crunchbase