Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
This Senior Applied Research Engineer role stands out in SaaS because it sits at the point where subscription software meets real-world data capture and automation. DroneDeploy operates a reality-capture platform used across multiple industries, and the remit is explicitly about turning modern 3D reconstruction methods into production capabilities. That combination of applied ML and shipping platform features is a recurring pattern in SaaS companies building differentiated product moats from proprietary data and workflow integration.
From a career standpoint, the work builds durable SaaS experience in operationalising research: model evaluation against customer-grade conditions, integration into an existing pipeline, and optimisation for reliability and efficiency at scale. The emphasis on production ownership, including long-tail support, maps closely to how advanced capabilities become dependable SaaS features. Daily use of AI coding agents also signals exposure to emerging engineering workflows that are increasingly relevant across modern software organisations.
The role fits professionals who prefer hands-on, end-to-end technical accountability rather than paper-driven research, and who enjoy balancing classical and learned approaches pragmatically. It is well suited to senior individual contributors comfortable collaborating remotely, communicating complex trade-offs clearly, and making decisions about what is ready to ship in a product environment.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
Job Description
About DroneDeploy
DroneDeploy powers field teams with robotics and AI. As the only reality capture platform that combines robotic automation, AI agents, and a truly unified system, DroneDeploy allows critical industries to operate with speed and confidence.
From construction and energy to agriculture, the world’s largest companies use DroneDeploy to simplify field operations, improve safety, and make smarter decisions, faster. By combining aerial drones, 360 and fixed cameras, ground robots and proprietary AI, we’re bringing the power of automation and visual intelligence to all stakeholders, from the field to the boardroom.
At DroneDeploy, we thrive in a mostly remote-first culture rooted in innovation and impact. We’ve been recognized as a Best Place to Work in the SF Bay Area and named one of America’s Great Places to Work—but what truly sets us apart is the experience you gain: solving real-world challenges with cutting-edge technology, surrounded by teammates who are as passionate as they are supportive. Our team is bold, mission-driven, and building something that matters. We foster a culture where a variety of perspectives drive smart decisions, and where growth—both personal and professional—is part of the journey. Whether it’s flexible schedules, family-friendly benefits, or our strong track record of internal promotions, we invest in people as much as we do in product. If you’re looking to be part of something ambitious, authentic, and transformative, you’ll find your place at DroneDeploy.
Overview
We're hiring a Senior Applied Research Engineer to push the frontier of reality capture. You'll take modern 3D reconstruction approaches — gaussian splatting, foundation 3D models like MASt3R and VGGT, learned depth — beyond their academic comfort zone and into our production pipeline. The lever you'll have here is rare: one of the industry's largest datasets of real-world reality capture imagery, the scale to train and adapt models on it, and the engineering culture to ship the results to customers. This is an IC role focused on applied research that ships — designing, training, and deploying models that run in production, not writing papers.
We're a small, high-leverage team behind an industry-leading photogrammetry platform. Our customers have mapped over 150M acres across more than 180 countries — one of the largest real-world reality capture datasets anywhere — across industries as diverse as construction, agriculture, mining, conservation, forestry, and infrastructure inspection. That scale and diversity is the moat: it's where modern 3D models meet real conditions that academic benchmarks don't capture, and where the hard engineering happens.
What matters most is real experience with modern reality capture — you have hands-on depth in either gaussian splatting or foundation 3D reconstruction (MASt3R / VGGT-class), and you've built and shipped 3D reconstruction systems in industry settings, whether at scale in production or in a focused startup environment. Experience training or fine-tuning these models on real-world data is a strong plus — that's a meaningful part of the work here. The frontier of the field is moving fast, and this role exists because we want someone who can push our pipeline forward on the modern stack and turn academic models into production-grade reality capture.
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Work Environment
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Work Model: Remote (work from home), with a strong preference for candidates who live in or can overlap substantially with Pacific Time.
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Travel: Occasional travel (approximately 2–3 times per year) for team and company offsites, technical planning sessions, and in-person collaboration.
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AI tooling: Daily use of advanced AI coding agents is expected. You'll be an active participant in the team's AI-first workflows — authoring reusable skills, evaluating tools against real problems, and holding agent-generated code to the same standard as human-written code.
Responsibilities
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Design, train, evaluate, and ship 3D reconstruction systems across our pipeline — gaussian splats, foundation 3D models, SfM, MVS, monocular depth, mesh reconstruction.
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Drive integration of modern reality capture approaches (splatting, foundation models) into our production stack — making the calls on what's ready to ship and what isn't.
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Own the hardest technical investigations in your area, from initial triage through production rollout and long-tail support.
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Optimize 3D systems for speed, accuracy, and efficiency at production scale.
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Use the right tool for the problem — classical 3D computer vision when it wins, learned approaches when they win.
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Stay current with 3D vision research and evaluate promising techniques against our workflows.
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Hold a high technical bar for your own work — high-quality designs, well-tested code, production-ready ship habits.
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Contribute to the team through code review, pairing, and design feedback.
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Codify debugging and investigation playbooks into reusable skills.
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Use AI tools daily across the SDLC, with judgment on where they help and where they don't.
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Author agent skills or tooling that other engineers use; contribute to the team's shared skills library.
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Conduct rigorous evaluations of new AI tools and bring useful patterns to the team.
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Review agent-generated code with the same rigor as human-written code.
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Track the AI tooling landscape and bring useful patterns to the team.
Requirements
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Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, with 5+ years of professional experience in 3D Computer Vision or 3D Machine Learning, or a PhD in Computer Vision, Machine Learning, or a closely related discipline.
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Hands-on experience with modern reality capture — specifically, gaussian splatting and/or foundation 3D reconstruction models (MASt3R, VGGT, or comparable). At least one of these from real hands-on work (production, startup, or other industry experience), not just paper familiarity.
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Demonstrable track record of building and shipping 3D reconstruction systems — in production, at a startup, or in another applied industry setting (not just research or prototype work).
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Deep experience across the broader 3D perception toolkit — at least three of: feature detection and matching, SfM, MVS, monocular depth estimation, mesh reconstruction, SLAM. Published research or open-source contributions in any of these areas is a plus.
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Comfort across the classical-vs-learned spectrum — you reach for the right tool, not the trendiest one.
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A real track record with agentic development.
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Strong C++ proficiency — much of our photogrammetry pipeline runs in C++ and you'll be working in it daily.
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Strong ability to timebox experiments, iterate effectively, and triage routes to success when the path isn't obvious.
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Fluency in modern ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, or equivalent) and modern training stacks.
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Ability to work as an effective remote engineer with AM standup overlap with PST.
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Strong written and verbal communication; you can take a technically dense investigation and make it land with PMs, leadership, and other engineers.
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Open-source agent skills, plugins, or prompts that others use.
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Experience running and monitoring many concurrent ML experiments in cloud environments.
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Comfort with cloud training and inference (AWS, GCP, Azure) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).
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Experience with geospatial systems or aerial imagery pipelines.
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#LI-Remote
Employee Offerings & Benefits
(Benefits may vary by location and role)
These are just some of the perks you'll enjoy—there's more to discover once you join us!
Culture of Innovation & Collaboration – Thrive in an environment that values creativity and teamwork.
Drone Certification – Get certified and gain unique, hands-on skills with our full backing.
Flexible Work Arrangements – Enjoy autonomy with remote-first options and schedule flexibility.
Paid Family Leave – Take the time you need to support your family during life’s most important moments.
Comprehensive Healthcare Coverage – Plans designed to support your well-being.
Career & Growth Development – Build new skills and unlock opportunities through continuous learning.
Flexible PTO – Take time off when you need it to recharge—we trust you to manage your time well.
Employee Referral Bonus – Know someone great? Refer them and earn a bonus when they join our team.
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DroneDeploy is an equal opportunity employer.
All DroneDeploy employees are responsible for protecting the company and customer data by following information security policies and procedures.
Please refer to our Recruitment Privacy Noticefor information about privacy during the recruiting process.
