Senior C++ / 3D Vision Engineer

Senior C++ / 3D Vision Engineer (UAV Autonomy)

Location: Delft, Netherlands

Work setup: On-site or fully remote within Europe with occasional travel to Delft

Start Date: ASAP

Contract: Full-time (5 days per week)

Competitive Salary + 10-15% bonus

Please note: Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.

Our client is a fast-growing deep-tech start-up operating at the cutting edge of autonomy, perception, and defence technology. their team develops advanced software that enables UAVs to understand and navigate the world through onboard 3D vision systems.

Their technology focuses on scalable solutions that work with low-cost, widely available sensors and computing hardware. By combining advanced perception algorithms with real-world deployment, they aim to deliver practical autonomy solutions for demanding environments.

Their engineering team brings together expertise from fields such as aerospace engineering, robotics, computational science, and computer graphics.

They collaborate closely with manufacturers, research institutes, and government partners across Europe, working on projects that range from early-stage research to real-world operational deployments.

The Role

As part of the core engineering team, you will contribute to the development of our onboard UAV situational awareness platform. The system enables drones to perceive and understand their environment in real time.

You will work on building and improving key capabilities such as:

• Interception detection
• Collision avoidance
• Target acquisition
• Visual navigation in GNSS-denied environments

This role focuses heavily on real-time 3D vision systems, combining computer vision, robotics, and high-performance C++ development.

What They're Looking For

We’re looking for an engineer with strong technical depth and the ability to turn advanced concepts into robust, real-world systems.

Core requirements:

• Strong proficiency in modern C++
• Experience developing real-time software (e.g. robotics, simulation, game engines, embedded systems)
• Deep understanding of 3D reconstruction and visual geometry, including concepts such as:
• Projective geometry
• Bundle adjustment
• Perspective-n-Point (PnP)
• Triangulation
• Feature detection and image matching
• Experience building systems in fields such as photogrammetry, augmented reality, robotics, or visual/inertial odometry (VIO)
• Experience working with 3D Gaussian Splatting or related techniques
• Strong intuition for 3D transformations and pose representations (e.g. quaternions, spatial math, transform trees)
• Practical experience with camera calibration, including intrinsics and extrinsics
• Experience working with sensor timing and synchronization, including handling timestamp integrity, jitter, dropped frames, and clock alignment issues
• Ability to work independently and solve complex engineering challenges

Nice-to-have experience:

• GPU programming (CUDA, OpenCL)
• Graphics pipelines (Vulkan, OpenGL)
• Integrating software on UAV platforms
• Familiarity with current research trends in 3D vision and perception

What They Offer

• Competitive salary
• 25 days of annual leave
• Travel expense reimbursement and company laptop
• Flexible working hours
• Option to work remotely (or hybrid if based in the Netherlands)
• Opportunity to work with a highly skilled international engineering team
• High levels of technical ownership and autonomy
• Freedom to experiment and implement solutions the right way
• Fast iteration cycles and direct feedback from real-world testing
• Opportunities to travel across Europe for flight testing and deployments

5V Tech are acting as an Employment Agency for the purposes of this job vacancy. We offer a reward scheme if you can recommend someone for this position, up to €250 for you and an additional €250 to a charity of your choice, 5V Tech are recognised talent solutions experts within IoT and Deep Tech working across Europe, the UK and North America.