Edge Computer Vision Engineer for Drones!

Company: Rownd (Rownd.ai / arcedge.ai)
Position Type: Full-time
Compensation: Competitive (Salary + Equity, DOE)
Location: Hybrid-remote (Strong preference for candidates in Raleigh-Durham area, Wisconsin, or other non-traditional tech hubs—outside of SF, NYC, Seattle, etc.)
Travel: 5-6 weeks of cumulative domestic travel per year (non-continuous, split across ~4 on-site team sessions, client sites, and conventions).

About Rownd

Rownd is a fast-paced, high-execution technology and hardware startup. We are building 100% autonomous physical assets—deploying custom software and hardware systems for defense and commercial sectors to put intelligent machines in the field.

We don't just write software or integrate off-the-shelf parts; we build the full drone from the ground up. We operate with extreme autonomy, an aggressive bias for action, and a "just do it" mindset. We don't write software to sit in the cloud; we write software to make physical things navigate, sense, and act in the real world. We are constantly pushing the absolute outer edges of what is physically and computationally possible. If you want to settle for what was state-of-the-art two years ago, Rownd is not the place for you. If you want to see your code fly, you belong here.

Position Overview

We are looking for our Edge Vision Person—an engineer who can design, build, and deploy the visual intelligence that powers our autonomous drones and edge assets.

Because we build the full hardware platform, you have complete ownership over the vision pipeline. You aren't handcuffed to someone else's hardware choices; you get to pick the cameras, choose the sensors, select the processor, and design the software stack that gets the job done.

This is not a traditional, slow-paced corporate research role. You won't be training trillion-parameter models on giant server clusters just to write a paper. Instead, you will be designing small, highly-optimized, lightning-fast models that live directly on the edge. You will need to be a "Jack of trades, and a master of SOME." We don't expect you to know everything, but we expect you to be world-class at a few core things, completely unafraid to jump into the rest, and highly transparent about where you need to learn.

You should be highly comfortable using Generative AI and AI coding assistants (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, LLMs) to multiply your output and ship production-grade code rapidly.

Culture, Trust & Expectations

At Rownd, we maintain a high level of trust and exceptionally high expectations.

Figure It Out: You won’t be handed a step-by-step playbook or a list of perfect requirements. You are expected to think outside the box, try wild new things, conduct rapid research, and do whatever it takes to accomplish our goals.
Comfortable Being Uncomfortable: Startups are fast and chaotic. You must be completely okay with extreme ambiguity, shifting requirements, and rapid change. When things pivot, your instinct should be to adapt and build, not freeze.
Positive & Collaborative: We are a tight-knit team. We look for people who are additive, collaborative, positive, and genuinely great to work with. No brilliant jerks.
Hard Work & Real Rest: This is a startup environment pushing hard to make history—it is not a traditional, comfortable 9-to-5. We work intensely when we are on, but we also fiercely protect our team's well-being. We expect you to actually take your time off, unplug, and recharge.
We work for and with the nation’s Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen: Must be willing and happy to provide software, models, and hardware to the Department of War. If you have moral reservations around supplying the US military and government, then this role and company are not for you.

Key Areas of Responsibility

Edge Model Design & Deployment (Core Focus)

Full Stack Hardware & Sensor Selection: Research, evaluate, and select optimal camera modules, lenses, optical sensors, and onboard edge compute processors to meet mission requirements.
Next-Gen Architectures: Implement, optimize, and deploy state-of-the-art vision models (including YOLO variants, CLIP, DINOv2, and newer, more interesting backbones). We expect you to aggressively research and adopt newer stacks rather than defaulting to comfortable, outdated frameworks.
Small & Fast Deployments:<

Edge Computer Vision Engineer for Drones! at Rownd