"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend." Robertson Davies
THE 3 KEY SKILLS
- Computer vision in production (essential): detection, tracking and re-identification models running on real cameras, not just in a notebook.
- Python (essential): inference, model evaluation and training pipelines.
- Elixir or another functional language (nice to have): Haskell, Scala, Clojure, F# and OCaml all count.
THE OPPORTUNITY
Most businesses have a camera on the wall, and almost none of them use what it sees. Our client, a venture-backed applied AI startup, turns ordinary store cameras into live operational data for restaurant, retail and convenience brands.
Their platform already runs in thousands of locations, and new enterprise contracts are about to multiply that footprint many times over. They need a senior engineer to make computer vision work reliably at that scale.
This is applied vision engineering, not research. You'll take models that work in the lab and make them hold up across 3,000+ stores with different lighting, camera angles, glare, crowds and drive-thru lanes.
WHAT YOU'LL BUILD
- People analytics: re-identification, cross-camera tracking, staff vs customer tagging and group detection
- Drive-thru vehicle analytics: detection, counting, timing and queue behaviour
- Model monitoring that measures accuracy at every new site, flags drift and feeds back into retraining
- Vision tooling and test harnesses for new model variants on edge devices and in the cloud
- The real-time Elixir backbone, from video ingestion and inference through to results, alerts and workflows
- Camera and install standards so large rollouts go smoothly the first time
THE TECH
- Python for inference, evaluation and training workflows
- Elixir and OTP for the core platform: concurrency, fault tolerance and real-time pipelines
- Edge devices plus cloud inference, balancing latency, bandwidth and cost
- Video ingestion at scale across thousands of live camera feeds
- An AI-first engineering team that uses coding agents and modern AI tools every day
WHAT YOU BRING
- 4+ years as a software engineer, including real time at a venture-backed startup
- At least one computer vision or ML system you took from concept to production, including evals, training pipelines and real-world tuning
- Hands-on detection (people or vehicles), tracking or re-ID work. Camera, surveillance, smart-city, retail-vision or autonomous-checkout experience is ideal
- Strong Python
- Elixir or another functional language is a big plus, not a must
- Open-source work or side projects are a big plus
THIS PROBABLY ISN'T FOR YOU IF
- Your background is pure ML research or LLM-only, or you mainly train models from scratch
- Your experience is government or defence
- You're a manager or executive no longer coding every day
- You've never shipped computer vision or ML to production
PACKAGE AND LOCATION
- $185K to $205K base plus meaningful equity
- Top-tier health benefits and flexible PTO
- Fully remote in the United States, with at least 5 hours overlap with Mountain Time and one team on-site visit a quarter
WORK AUTHORIZATION (IMPORTANT)
You must be a US citizen or US Green Card holder. Visa sponsorship is not available now or in the future, and we cannot consider H-1B, OPT, TN or any other visa holders.
Full details: https://bigwavedigital.com/jobs/senior-software-engineer-computer-vision-elixir-python-remote-us/