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Senior Perception Engineer

Remote; Washington, District of Columbia, United States

Our mission is to be the technology backbone for strategic competition against peer adversaries. These missions – including intelligence, information operations, special activities, and perception management – are happening today and their success or failure will determine if we go to war tomorrow.

We've been on the front lines of these missions since 2019, and have grown to support a wide range of missions across all US service branches, multiple combatant commands, partner nations, interagency stakeholders, and the intelligence community. We deploy both hardware and software products to support people on the front lines that span collection, planning / assessments, and effects.

We've grown from $3M in run-rate revenue in 2021 to $80M in run-rate revenue today. We've been profitable since 2022 and have raised $91M in venture capital funding through Series B. We're valued at $1.5B as of 2025.

About the role

The sensing team at Vannevar Labs is building a new hardware product that supports a widespread need for cheap, attritable, and easily coordinated sensing. We’re looking for someone with expertise in RF signal interpretation and how modern machine learning techniques can be applied to characterize unknown RF signals, identify known ones, flag anomalous RF activity, and many other problem of interest to national security.

You will be a member of a cross-functional team made up of software engineers, machine learning specialists, former military officers, and product strategists. You will bring critical domain expertise to the team and have an opportunity to set the standard for how Vannevar Labs conducts sensing R&D efforts.

What you'll do

  • Create, implement, and deploy RF sensing solutions for the identification of known signals and the characterization of unknown signals
  • Partner with other engineering teams to deliver solutions in a variety of domains including machine learning, hardware, embedded software, and visualization tools.
  • Mentor other engineers and grow our team’s domain expertise in RF sensing
  • Travel up to 20% of the time to meet with mission owners, better understand requirements, and deliver capabilities

About you

  • 8+ years of industry experience
  • Proven experience applying machine learning techniques to RF signal processing problems
  • Experience building and owning signal processing and machine learning capabilities end-to-end
  • Strong communications skills and ability to work with engineers with limited domain expertise
  • Proven experience with Python in production systems

Nice to haves

  • Knowledge of RF signal concepts including modulation techniques, beamforming, symbol correlation, adaptive signal processing, target tracking, noise analysis, etc
  • Possession of active U.S. security clearance (TS/SCI) and ability to maintain clearance

At Vannevar Labs, we're committed to building teams that include a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills, as this is critical to helping us achieve our mission. If you're interested in this role and don't meet every listed requirement, we still encourage you to apply.

What we offer

The salary range for this position is $160,000-$210,000 + equity + 401K match. Within the range, individual pay is determined by experience, relevant education, and/or training.
 
We’re proud to offer competitive benefits that support our employees. Some key highlights of our benefits package include:
  • Health, dental, and vision insurance
  • 100% remote first culture. You can work from anywhere in the US and all full time employees have WeWork access
  • Unlimited PTO including competitive vacation and holiday schedules
  • Lifestyle stipends - Monthly mental health, wellness & fitness stipend, in-home office setup stipend and family planning assistance
  • Salary top-up during military reserve duty
  • Fully paid parental leave
  • Child and pet care reimbursement during travel
Vannevar Labs is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status.
 
We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply, even if you don't feel like you're a perfect fit. If you're passionate about contributing to our mission, we'd love to hear from you!
 
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We are committed to protecting the privacy of all applicants. Official emails from the company will come from an @vannevarlabs.com domain. Under no circumstances will a legitimate representative from our company contact you to request passwords, financial information, or other sensitive personal data. Please be vigilant of potential scams.

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