--- title: 'Senior Perception Engineer at Atomic' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-perception-engineer-atomic-san-francisco-n56ecasqp62q' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-10-16' --- # Senior Perception Engineer at Atomic - **Company:** Atomic - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-10-02 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-16 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/atomic/513835d1-bb98-49c7-a494-dbc1da2cc4c5 ## Job description ## Who We Are Sauron is the home security company of the future. Homeowners today lack compelling options when it comes to peace of mind against vulnerabilities, and total command and control of their home; there is no definitive, protective brand in the space. Leveraging cutting-edge AI, sensor technology, and nonlethal deterrence, Sauron brings next-generation technology to homeowners to protect their families and property. Incubated by the serial entrepreneur Kevin Hartz and Atomic, Sauron has raised an $18M seed round from leading venture capital firms and angel investors, including 8VC and Flock Safety CEO Garret Langley, to build the new perception system for the home. ## The Role - Senior Perception Engineer Perception is the foundation of the Sauron product. Every decision the system makes (what to show a homeowner, what to disregard, what to escalate) depends on whether we have correctly understood what took place outside the home. We are seeking the person who will own this domain. Our hardware operates around the home and must complete its mission reliably in all environmental conditions: at night, in adverse weather, and in the presence of occlusion and deliberate evasion. In this role, you will set the technical direction for how we achieve that, including what we sense, what we infer, which problems are best addressed through models and which through systems, and what "ready to ship" means in measurable terms rather than impressions. You will own the perception architecture and the accuracy, latency, and cost tradeoffs that underpin it. You will work closely with the hardware team to define sensing requirements across successive product generations, and you will serve as the authority that cloud, product, and hardware teams consult to understand what perception can and cannot do. You will write a substantial amount of code, focused on the most difficult problems, but your success will be measured by whether the perception system as a whole becomes better, faster, and more trustworthy. We Value - Collaboration, pair programming, and teamwork. - Taking ownership across the stack. - Test-driven development, and refactoring regularly to keep our codebases healthy. You Will Contribute By... - Evolving the pipeline architecture so cameras can come and go, and configuration can change, without disrupting live video or losing object identity. - Setting the boundary between systems and models. You decide what belongs in the compiled service, what belongs in the inference graph, and where the performance ceiling really is. - Owning perception quality end to end. Defining what good looks like in numbers: evaluation data, a regression harness, and a defensible story on model choice for our hardware. - Extracting the maximum value from our sensors. Fusing every observation available while staying robust to occlusion, poor lighting, and deliberate evasion. - Taking the service from "runs" to "trustworthy unattended." Failure detection, graceful degradation, and observability good enough that we know why something broke without a site visit. - Closing the loop from the field. Using deployment data to find headroom, and building the dataset and evaluation infrastructure that makes that repeatable. - Leading the work and the people. Setting direction across perception, reviewing the hard changes, and owning the interfaces perception exposes to the rest of the product. Your Background Includes... - Around 5+ years building production systems, with several at staff scope: owning a system's architecture, not just its tickets. - Significant professional experience with perception or machine learning for hardware products in a safety-critical field - aerospace, robotics, medical devices, autonomous vehicles, or physical security. - Deep modern C++. This is a C++20 codebase with Abseil, gRPC, and CMake; you should be comfortable owning lifetime, threading, and shutdown semantics in a long-running daemon. - Real GStreamer or media-pipeline experience: pads, probes, caps negotiation, bus messages, and the specific pathology of a pipeline that is alive but not moving. DeepStream or another NVIDIA video stack is a strong plus. - Applied computer vision you have shipped - multi-object tracking, re-identification, or multi-camera association - and the judgment to know when the answer is a better model versus better geometry versus better plumbing. - A clear grasp of linear algebra, optimization, statistics, and algorithms, and the theory behind the techniques you reach for. - Experience across the deep-learning lifecycle: PyTorch or an equivalent framework, custom layers and operations, optimizing networks for inference on edge compute, reproducibility, and honest evaluation. - GPU inference in practice: TensorRT engines, batching, fp16, and reasoning about where latency actually goes. - Edge instincts. You have debugged something that only fails on the device, after nine hours, on one customer's network, and you treat observability and failure classification as part of the feature. - Python fluency. A meaningful share of the load-bearing logic is Python, and you will be the one deciding what it costs us. - A generalist mindset - able to dive in wherever the bottleneck is, from cloud training infrastructure down to embedded systems. - Excellent written and verbal communication, and the ability to set technical direction and disagree productively with adjacent teams. ## Nice to Have - NVIDIA Jetson in production - JetPack, L4T, Yocto images, or the joy of cross-building for aarch64. - Previous experience building multi-camera tracking systems. - Video surveillance, VMS, or ONVIF/RTSP integrations, and knowing how cameras actually misbehave. - GPU architecture and CUDA programming. - Familiarity with VLMs and other multi-modal models for semantic scene understanding. - Owning model evaluation: datasets, metrics, and the discipline to reject a model that benchmarks better but ships worse. We are focused on building a diverse and inclusive workforce. If you’re excited about this role, but do not meet 100% of the qualifications listed above, we encourage you to apply. ----- Atomic is an Equal Opportunity Employer and considers applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, orientation, national origin, age, disability, genetics or any other basis forbidden under federal, state, or local law. Please review our [CCPA policies](https://www.atomic.vc/job-applicant-privacy) here. ## About Atomic ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Atomic is a venture studio that builds high-growth companies by pairing entrepreneurs with a built-in founding team of experts, capital, and resources. - **Entity Type**: Private (venture studio and fund; raised $320M for fourth fund) - **Headquarters**: Miami, Florida, United States (with a San Francisco office and distributed teams across the U.S. and Canada) - **Founded**: 2012 - **Founders**: Jack Abraham (Managing Partner & CEO) ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Venture studio / startup builder (operates across fintech, web3, proptech, education, enterprise, healthcare, and more) - **Target customers**: Entrepreneurs and co-founders looking to launch scalable companies; B2B and B2C end-markets vary by portfolio company - **Mission or purpose statement**: “Bring ideas, capital, resources, and talent together to build the best ideas into great companies” (LinkedIn) ## Products & Services - **Co-Found with Atomic**: The core model – a founder joins Atomic as a co-founder and gets immediate access to an in-house team covering engineering, design, marketing, legal, finance, HR, and recruiting, plus a playbook and capital to de‑risk company building. - **Atomic Fund**: A $320 million fund (fourth fund) used exclusively to start and scale companies built inside Atomic. - **Portfolio Companies**: Notable companies built at Atomic include **Hims & Hers** (NYSE: HIMS), **Homebound**, **OpenStore**, **Replicant**, **Found**, and **Bungalow** (each operates as an independent business). ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed for Atomic itself (as a private studio) - **Key Metric**: Total raised for fourth fund – **$320 million** (exclusive report); annual studio revenue estimated at **$6.0M** (LinkedIn) - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Led by Managing Partner Jack Abraham; General Partner includes ex-Postmates CFO; additional undisclosed LPs in the fund. - **Growth Signals**: 72 employees (LinkedIn), monthly headcount growth of +1.2%, active in 9 countries (U.S., Canada, South Africa, China, Philippines, Qatar, Ukraine, Netherlands, Nigeria); 3 current job openings with 50% monthly increase in postings. ## Competitive Advantages - **Founding team as a service**: Atomic provides a complete startup infrastructure (legal, finance, HR, design, marketing, recruiting) from day one – a “built-in co-founder” approach that removes typical early-stage friction. - **Proven track record**: Portfolio includes publicly traded companies (Hims & Hers) and multiple billion-dollar entities, de‑risking the model for new entrepreneurs. - **Capital + talent density**: The $320M fund, combined with an experienced team of serial entrepreneurs and specialists, allows rapid iteration and scaling across multiple verticals simultaneously. ## Strategic Focus - Continue scaling the studio-fund model by deploying the fourth fund into new company creations. - Expand into additional high‑opportunity markets (healthcare, AI, enterprise) while deepening expertise in existing verticals. - Grow the internal team across key functions (engineering, growth, strategic finance, talent acquisition) to support more parallel company builds. ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: Described as “a place for anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit” – employees work alongside serial founders and get exposure to launching multiple startups. Built In rates culture 4.1/5 and career growth 4.4/5. - **Work model**: Hybrid (on‑site at Miami HQ or San Francisco office for most roles; some remote positions available). - **Perks & team**: Collaborative, low‑ego environment; access to a network of top‑tier operators; roles offer high ownership and visibility into company‑building processes. ## Sources 1. [atomic.vc](https://www.atomic.vc/) – Homepage, join page, team page 2. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/atomic-vc) – Company overview, perks, culture 3. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/atomic-vc) – Company details, financials, workforce, reviews ## Other roles at Atomic - [Office Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/office-manager-atomic-miami-tsv5vhsn0nvq) — Miami, FL - [Head of Brand & Creative](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-brand-creative-atomic-united-states-hxgbgpb2tjyd) — United States - [CX Specialist (Temp)](https://feeny.ai/job/cx-specialist-temp-atomic-united-states-fa5xxp882ebz) — United States - [Senior Device Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-device-software-engineer-atomic-san-francisco-d7cmjgn22afc) — San Francisco, CA - [Sales Concierge](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-concierge-atomic-united-states-wmdaymc73dmh) — United States - [Founding Forward Deployed Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-forward-deployed-engineer-atomic-united-states-e4vbyt2zqwws) — United States - [Deal Origination Associate](https://feeny.ai/job/deal-origination-associate-atomic-united-states-6mbsk9vnm53k) — United States - [Founding Clinical AI Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-clinical-ai-lead-atomic-miami-tjwbnqsmqp4k) — Miami, FL - [Co-found with Atomic](https://feeny.ai/job/co-found-with-atomic-atomic-miami-zr9h9vqrk8mq) — Miami, FL - [Senior Perception Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-perception-engineer-neros-technologies-torrance-dabfmne88x4w) — Torrance, CA