Wardstone is building the next generation of space-based missile defense. We design and deploy autonomous orbital interceptors capable of defeating hypersonic and ballistic threats, a capability the U.S. and its allies urgently need but that no one has yet delivered.

At Wardstone, you will build hardware that gets tested constantly and pushed to its limits, from US Air Force assisted ground experiments to supersonic ground launched platforms to future orbital prototypes. You’ll work on systems that combine advanced sensing, guidance, high-energy physics, and spaceflight in ways few organizations on Earth attempt.

We are a small, elite engineering team moving fast to solve problems of national importance. Every engineer has massive ownership, rapid iteration cycles, and a direct impact on the direction of the company and the defense of millions of people.

If you want to work at the intersection of space, autonomy, and national security, you should join Wardstone.

We are looking for a Sensing and Perception Engineer to own Wardstone’s entire sensing system from sensor selection and integration to low-level image pipelines to real-time target tracking. You will work at the intersection of sensor hardware, computer vision algorithms, embedded systems, optics, and vehicle guidance.

This role is central to Wardstone’s mission. Your system determine whether an interceptor knows where to go!

You will work directly with founders, build test rigs, run high-speed experiments, and ship perception systems into hardware that performs real intercepts.

What You’ll Do

IR & EO Sensor Integration

• Integrate sensor modules into avionics architecture.
• Own sensor selection, FOV analysis, lensing, NUC, calibration workflows, and driver integration.
• Develop high-reliability camera interfaces: SPI/I2C, MIPI, USB3, Ethernet, GMSL, or custom buses.

Real-Time Computer Vision & Tracking

• Build perception pipelines capable of tracking high-speed objects with extremely low latency.
• Implement target detection, centroid extraction, filtering, gating, and motion-compensation algorithms.
• Develop robust tracking under noise, flare, thermal clutter, high dynamic range, and glint effects.

Sensor Fusion & Estimation

• Fuse IR/EO data with IMU, GPS, and onboard state estimators.
• Work with controls engineers to build perception-to-guidance interfaces for closed loop control.
• Build EKF/UKF filters, temporal alignment, and prediction modules.

Verification & Validation

• Design sensor test rigs: hot/cold targets, blackbody references, collimators, high-G mounts.
• Conduct hardware-in-the-loop tests with simulated targets, scene generators, and flight dynamics models.
• Collect, label, and analyze high-speed footage from ground+flight experiments, HAB flights, and tracking tests.
• Stress-test perception under temperature, vibration, and shock conditions.

Required Qualifications

• B.S. in EE, CS, Physics, Robotics, or similar.
• Strong experience with IR/EO camera systems, Radar, imaging physics, calibration, and noise modeling.
• Deep proficiency in computer vision (OpenCV, NumPy, SciPy, C++/Python).
• Experience implementing real-time detection and tracking algorithms.
• Understanding of signal processing, filtering, sensor fusion, and coordinate transforms.
• Hands-on testing experience using thermal cameras, radar, calibration targets, or optical equipment.
• US CITIZENSHIP REQUIRED

Nice to Haves

• Experience working with LWIR sensors (FLIR Boson/Tau, ULIS, Teledyne, etc.) or Radar Units.
• Background in missile seekers, UAV tracking, air-to-air systems, or autonomous robotics under high speed.
• Experience with GPU acceleration (CUDA, TensorRT), embedded systems, or FPGA-based vision pipelines.
• Familiarity with optical modeling, lens design, radiometry, and atmospheric attenuation.
• Knowledge of IR scene modeling, signature tracking, or synthetic target generation.
• Experience with high-dynamic-range thermal environments or high-G mount design.
• Exposure to defense/aerospace sensor standards or MIL-STD environments.

Our first product, Hailstorm, integrates multiple advanced technologies:

• VLEO satellite interceptors with high maneuverability and rapid response times.
• Infrared sensing and real-time perception, enabling autonomous target detection and tracking.
• High-impulse propulsion and high-energy dispersal systems capable of generating millisecond-scale accelerations.
• Advanced guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) for midcourse correction and terminal homing.
• Physics-driven simulation environments modeling orbital mechanics, missile trajectories, thermal loads, and pellet-cloud dynamics.
• Kinetic particle-cloud intercept architecture that provides a cost-effective, scalable alternative to traditional hit-to-kill missile systems.