Perception & Tracking Engineer at Allen Control Systems (Austin, TX)Perception & Tracking Engineer

Company Overview ACS (Allen Control Systems) is a defense technology company building precision robotic systems for the United States and its allies. Founded by two former U.S. Navy electrical engineers with deep experience in robotics and software, ACS brings together AI, computer vision, precision motion, and advanced hardware to solve complex defense challenges across land, air, and maritime environments. Our flagship product, Bullfrog, is an autonomous precision weapon system that transforms existing weapons into highly accurate counter-drone systems — giving warfighters a scalable, cost-effective response to one of the fastest-growing threats on the modern battlefield. Bullfrog is deployed with U.S. forces, and ACS works with organizations throughout the U.S. military and national security community. Following a $200 million Series B at a $2.2 billion valuation, ACS is rapidly expanding manufacturing, accelerating Bullfrog deployments, and developing the next generation of autonomous battlefield systems. This is an opportunity to join a proven, fast-moving team and help scale technology with direct, real-world impact on national security. ACS is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with additional operations in Alexandria, Virginia; Mountain View, California; and Huntsville, Alabama. For more information, visit allencontrolsystems.com.

Position Overview We are seeking a Perception and Tracking Engineer to join our team. This person will specialize in deep algorithmic understanding and production-grade software development for real-time multi-target inertial tracking for robotics and autonomous systems. In this role, you will design and implement both classical and modern deep learning algorithms for real-time perception algorithms that enable robots and autonomous systems to detect, track, and understand objects in dynamic environments. You will work closely with robotics, software, and platform engineers to develop high-performance computer vision and tracking systems that operate reliably in real-world conditions and on resource-constrained hardware. This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy solving challenging perception problems, building real-time systems, and working at the intersection of machine learning, robotics, and computer vision. We’re hiring across multiple experience levels, including:

• Associate Perception & Tracking Engineer
• Perception & Tracking Engineer
• Senior Perception & Tracking Engineer Your title and level will be determined based on your experience, skills, and the scope of responsibility appropriate for the role.

What You'll Do:

• Design, implement, test, debug, and maintain core 3D Computer Vision based multi-object tracking algorithms and infrastructure, including measurement conditioning, data association, track correlation, propagation, track initialization/maintenance/deletion, and handling of track uncertainty.
• Develop and optimize computer vision algorithms for real-time detection and tracking of small objects in robotic and autonomous systems.
• Implement and improve object detection and multi-object tracking pipelines using modern deep learning techniques. Analyze and resolve complex tracking issues such as track fragmentation, ID switches, poor association in clutter, sensitivity to measurement quality/latency, and coordinate system challenges.
• Train, evaluate, and deploy machine learning models for perception tasks in dynamic environments.
• Design image preprocessing and feature extraction pipelines to improve model robustness and performance.
• Optimize tracking pipelines for low-latency, real-time performance on embedded hardware and/or GPUs. Profile bottlenecks and apply algorithmic or implementation improvements.
• Collaborate with robotics and software teams to integrate perception systems into autonomous platforms and real-world deployments.
• Participate in the full software development lifecycle: requirements, design, implementation, unit/integration/system testing, deployment, and maintenance. Follow strong software engineering practices and support automated testing and evaluation frameworks.
• Define tracking-specific metrics, evaluation harnesses, and test scenarios. Quantify and improve accuracy, robustness, stability, and computational efficiency.

Required Technical Skills:

• 2-3 years of experience working with perception algorithms, robotics, or machine learning and comfortable in a role that specializes in 3D Computer Vision based tracking
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, Applied Math or related field
• Strong experience developing vision-based tracking algorithms for real-time applications
• Experience implementing object detection (YOLO, SSD, R-CNN, or similar) and classic or deep learning-based tracking algorithms (Kalman and particle filters, ByteTrack, or similar)
• Solid applied math foundation in linear algebra, probability, statistics, and optimal estimation (Kalman filtering and variants)
• Experience with image preprocessing, feature extraction, and other classical computer vision pipelines
• Strong programming skills in Python and C++

Preferred Technical Skills:

• Production experience integrating real-time tracking algorithms into robotic perception systems on edge or embedded hardware.
• Experience with multi-sensor fusion and integrating heterogeneous sensor data (cameras + LiDAR, RADAR, or other modalities) into tracking pipelines.
• Ability to go beyond library usage (e.g., ByteTrack, DeepSORT) and implement or significantly customize core tracking logic.
• Familiarity with practical tracking challenges and mitigations: measurement latency, varying update rates, coordinate transformations/registration, track-to-track fusion concepts, IMM-style maneuver modeling, and handling of redundant or conflicting measurements.
• Experience working on robotics systems or embedded vision platforms
• Experience optimizing vision workloads using CUDA or GPU acceleration