Embedded Camera Engineer

About the company

Efference provides high-performance perception and compute infrastructure for training and deploying robot models in the cloud. Our vision is to make robotic deployments scalable with shared compute.

We approach the problem by owning the entire path from the image sensor to the datacenter GPU. We shrink the load at the sensor, fix the uplink so robot traffic is fast and reliable, and clock synchronize the system so observations arrive time-aligned, ready for inference.

About the role

You'll own camera bring-up and the low-level software that turns sensor output into reliable, correctly timed frames. You'll work with electrical, embedded Linux, and imaging engineers to support new sensors and maintain the camera path across Efference devices.

What you’ll do

• Write and maintain sensor drivers, configure register maps and operating modes, and bring up camera modules on prototype and production boards.
• Integrate MIPI CSI-2 capture and Linux camera interfaces, including V4L2 subdevices, media graphs, and sensor-to-ISP control paths.
• Implement exposure, gain, frame-rate, trigger, and synchronization controls, with accurate metadata describing when and how each frame was captured.
• Validate multi-camera timing and camera/IMU alignment with instrumented measurements, including readout timing and timestamp behavior under load.
• Optimize frame delivery through buffers and DMA paths; diagnose corrupted images, frame drops, stalls, bandwidth limits, and recovery after disconnects.
• Build sensor diagnostics and automated capture tests, working with ISP and factory teams on calibration, acceptance testing, and production issues.

What we are looking for

• Experience developing embedded camera software, sensor drivers, or low-level imaging pipelines.
• Strong C/C++ skills and practical knowledge of Linux drivers, device trees, and hardware/software debugging.
• Understanding of sensor timing, MIPI CSI-2, I2C/SPI control, and RAW/Bayer and YUV pixel formats.
• Ability to read sensor datasheets, register maps, and schematics and verify behavior with lab instruments.
• Experience isolating problems across the sensor, capture hardware, driver, and downstream image-processing path.

Nice to Have

• Experience with global-shutter sensors, stereo cameras, external triggering, or camera/IMU synchronization.
• Work with NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Ambarella, Rockchip, or similar camera SoCs and their vendor tooling.
• Knowledge of ISP control loops, DMA-BUF, GStreamer, or factory camera calibration.