Data Acquistion Module Lead

About Us

• Harmattan AI is a next-generation defense prime building autonomous and scalable defense systems. Following the close of a $200M Series B, valuing the company at $1.4 billion, we are expanding our teams and capabilities to deliver mission-critical systems to allied forces.
• Our work is guided by clear values: building technologies with real-world impact, pursuing excellence in everything we do, setting ambitious goals, and taking on the hardest technical challenges. We operate in a demanding environment where rigor, ownership, and execution are expected.

About the Role

As Data Acquisition Module Lead, you own how Harmattan collects the real-world sensor data that trains its onboard detection and tracking models. You run the module end to end: acquisition roadmap, sensor integration, field campaigns, and dataset quality and delivery to the computer vision and AI teams. You lead and grow a team of engineers while staying hands-on in the field. Every flight you run turns scarce test time into usable data.

Responsibilities

• Turn the data needs of the computer vision and AI teams into a prioritized roadmap of collection campaigns.
• Plan and run field campaigns across sensors, scenarios, environments and data volumes.
• Act as single owner and point of contact for every field session assigned to the module.
• Own sensor integration and calibration on aircraft and ground systems, including time synchronization and logging.
• Build the pipeline from raw field capture to curated, documented and versioned datasets, with quality checks before leaving the field.
• Define dataset acceptance criteria and clear handovers with the computer vision team and the annotation provider.
• Arbitrate flight slots and test field access with Flight Operations and Validation to maximize usable data per flight.
• Structure the team’s work, hire the profiles the module needs to grow, and mentor engineers.
• Stay hands-on by operating alongside the team in the field and reporting regularly on progress, dataset coverage and gaps.

Candidate Requirements

• At least 6 years of experience in sensor data collection or field testing for perception or AI systems, ideally airborne.
• Hands-on experience with EO/IR, radar or comparable sensors, including synchronization, calibration, storage and metadata.
• Experience running multi-person field campaigns and leading a small team.
• Track record of turning a model team’s needs into a concrete data collection plan.
• Piloting or flight operations exposure.
• Safety-conscious, organized and pragmatic in the field, and comfortable arbitrating scarce flight time.
• Clear communicator toward AI engineers who depend on the data you deliver.
• A background in electronics, signal processing, robotics, physics or computer science is a plus; demonstrated field and data experience matters more.
• We look forward to hearing how you can help shape the future of autonomous defense systems at Harmattan AI.