Principal Camera & Sensor Applications Engineer at Mythic (Palo Alto, CA)
Mythic· Palo Alto, CA· $180k–$270k·
Role details
Job description
The Principal Camera & Sensor Applications Engineer is the technical front line between Mythic's silicon and the customers who will build products on it. The role leads initial technical engagements to understand customer imaging, sensing, and embedded-AI use cases, translates those needs into measurable system requirements, and builds the demonstrations and reference designs that prove Mythic's analog compute advantage in a real camera system. Internally, the role is the sensor and camera-system subject-matter expert — identifying where Mythic technology adds value across automotive, robotics, medical, consumer, and industrial applications, and converting field insight into MRDs, PRDs, and prioritized engineering requirements.
The position is deliberately complementary to the Director, Sensor System Engineering role: where that role owns platform architecture and integration from the core HW/SW side, this role owns the customer-facing and applications side — engagement, requirements capture, demos and evaluation kits, design-in support, and system-level validation criteria. Together they close the loop between what customers need and what the Gen2 roadmap delivers.
What you'll do
External/Customer-Facing
- Lead initial technical engagements to understand customer imaging, sensing, and embedded-AI use cases, system architectures, and product constraints.
- Translate customer needs into measurable requirements for image quality, AI performance, latency, power, reliability, interfaces, and system cost.
- Define and develop customer demonstrations, evaluation kits, reference designs, and proof-of-concept systems integrating sensors with Mythic technology.
- Support customers through technical evaluation, system integration, troubleshooting, and design-in.
Internal-Facing
- Serve as the sensor and camera-system subject-matter expert, identifying where Mythic technology can add value across automotive, robotics, medical, consumer, and industrial applications.
- Translate system and customer requirements into MRDs, PRDs, functional specifications, and prioritized engineering requirements.
- Work closely with silicon, hardware, software, and AI teams to assess feasibility, identify capability gaps, and guide product-roadmap decisions.
- Define system-level validation plans and success criteria covering image quality, AI accuracy, latency, power, reliability, and overall customer experience.
What you'll bring
- 10+ years in camera systems, imaging, or embedded vision, including senior technical or team leadership.
- Deep expertise across the imaging signal chain: image sensors, optics, ISP, tuning and calibration, and image-quality measurement.
- Demonstrated success taking camera or vision systems from architecture and prototype through validation and volume production.
- Strong customer-facing technical skills — running evaluations, integration support, and troubleshooting with external engineering teams.
- Proven ability to author functional specifications, MRDs/PRDs, and prioritized requirements that engineering teams can execute against.
- Cross-functional fluency with silicon, hardware, firmware, software, and AI teams.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience deploying vision models on embedded or specialized AI accelerators; familiarity with edge AI, SoC integration, or compute-in-memory architectures.
- Background spanning two or more of Automotive (ADAS/in-cabin), Robotics, Medical, Consumer, and Industrial imaging.
- Hands-on development of reference designs, evaluation kits, or proof-of-concept camera systems.
- Semiconductor-side experience with image sensors or ISP product definition.
Why work at Mythic
- Impactful Mission: Work at the frontier of AI hardware, solving the fundamental energy efficiency problem in AI compute.
- Collaborative, Results‑Focused Culture: Mythic describes itself as a “collaborative, results‑focused team where everyone has a chance to contribute and lead.”
- Rapid Growth: 46% YoY headcount growth and a recently acquired company signal strong momentum and career growth opportunities.
- Diverse Technical Challenges: Roles span chip design, compiler engineering, AI algorithms, firmware, and systems engineering.
- Hybrid/Office Policy: Some roles are listed as hybrid (e.g., Palo Alto, Austin) or fully on‑site; exact policy varies by position. The company has offices in Austin, Silicon Valley, and Vancouver, with a growing presence in Bangalore.
- Notable Perks: Not explicitly stated, but working at a well‑funded, pre‑IPO startup in the AI hardware space typically offers equity, competitive compensation, and the chance to shape the future of computing.