Zone 5 Technologies
Perception Simulation Engineer II/III
About this role
Zone 5 Technologies seeks a Perception Simulation Engineer II/III to develop high-fidelity sensor simulation and synthetic data generation within an Unreal Engine environment for unmanned aircraft systems. You'll build RGB and thermal camera models, stream realistic sensor feeds to ROS 2, and create synthetic data pipelines that enable perception software validation before flight testing.
What you'll do
- Build high-fidelity RGB and long-wave IR thermal camera models in Unreal Engine with realistic rendering from platform-mounted cameras
- Tune simulated camera output to match real-world sensor performance (FOV, resolution, framerate, thermal response) based on actual flight hardware specs
- Implement sensor noise, artifacts, motion blur, and failure modes to test perception software against realistic degraded scenarios
- Stream sensor feeds onto ROS 2 topics and integrate with detection, tracking, and Target State Estimation (TSE) perception stacks
- Develop and maintain synthetic data pipelines for training and validating perception algorithms
- Work across simulation and perception teams to validate that sim data produces trustworthy real-world perception results
What they're looking for
- Unreal Engine (C++ and/or Blueprints)
- Sensor simulation and camera modeling
- ROS 2 integration and middleware
- Thermal/infrared imaging physics and LWIR sensor knowledge
- Python for data processing and pipeline scripting
- Computer vision fundamentals
- Real-time rendering and graphics optimization
- Synthetic data generation techniques
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Zone 5 Technologies
Zone 5 Technologies designs and manufactures unmanned aircraft systems and UAVs, focusing on advanced avionics integration and autonomous flight technologies. The company is hiring Systems Integration & Test Engineers, Systems Engineers, and Continuous Improvement Engineers to develop Hardware-in-the-Loop environments, optimize manufacturing processes, and validate next-generation unmanned aircraft systems.
View all jobs at Zone 5 TechnologiesLikely interview questions
- Describe your experience building or tuning camera models in simulation environments—what made the simulated output realistic enough for downstream software validation?
- How have you approached matching simulated sensor performance to real hardware specs, and what challenges did you encounter with thermal or infrared imaging specifically?