Hardware Systems Architect

Employer

Job Description

Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. Through our family of apps and services, we're building a different kind of company that connects billions of people around the world, gives them ways to share what matters most to them, and helps bring people closer together. Whether we're creating new products or helping a small business expand its reach, people at Facebook are builders at heart. Our global teams are constantly iterating, solving problems, and working together to empower people around the world to build community and connect in meaningful ways. Together, we can help people build stronger communities - we're just getting started.

As a Hardware System Architect at Facebook Reality Labs, you will lead architecture on upcoming AR/VR/Wearables products, help drive the overall strategy & roadmap, and be a part of the teams designing, building, and testing prototypes for future consumer AR/VR/Wearables reality experiences. We want people who: work well in teams, can brainstorm big ideas, work in new technology areas, thrive in ambiguity, able to map tradespaces, able to drive a concept into a prototype, and can envision how a prototype could transition into a high-volume consumer product.The Reality Labs Hardware System Architect will lead the definition and convergence of complex and novel sub-system and product architectures aimed at pushing beyond the state-of-the-art consumer AR/VR/Wearable systems. These can span new sensing systems, display/optics systems, input devices, and full VR headsets. The role requires expert technical communication with cross-functional teams across ID, hardware engineering, partnerships, supply chain and core technology groups to drive incubation of new technologies from proof of concept through integration into products for mass production. This role requires excellent technical understanding of consumer electronics and AR/VR/Wearable reality systems across the stack.Starting with a broad engineering background in electrical, mechanical, optics, silicon, or related fields, we’re looking for a unique system designer or architect. The ideal candidate would have strong systems skills, previous roles driving architecture convergence on complex consumer electronics products, and experience with SoC evaluation, optical systems, sensors, CV algorithms, software, and be able to work collaboratively with experts in different fields to make architectural tradeoffs.

Responsibilities
  • Own system architectures encompassing compute, displays/optics, EE, sensors, calibration, and firmware from initial conception through prototyping, product development, and production ramp
  • Lead product architecture for roadmap products, communicate trade-offs, program concerns and technical direction
  • Drive the technical scoping and development of new technologies to deliver generation defining user experiences for future products on the roadmap
  • Conduct detailed analysis and trade-off studies for complex systems
  • Engage with technology project leads, and various component SMEs in creating the overall system architecture and platform as the starting point for product execution
  • Deliver engineering solutions hardest architectural problems in early phase concept development (ensuring translation of marketing requirements to product)
  • Communicate technology and product strategy effectively to both internal and external stakeholders
  • Guide management & partner teams on long term technology investments
  • Create proof-of-concept physical prototypes
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams on blank-slate and early-phase prototyping and product exploration, mapping it to strategic and product questions which need to be resolved
  • Create hardware system metrics, standards and tools
  • Drive development of system requirements to create new augmented/virtual reality experiences, and help advance technology and research roadmaps
  • Travel up to 15% time domestically and internationally
Minimum Qualification
  • 10+ years of product experience in electrical, mechanical or optical engineering
  • Experience with architecture and systems engineering across electrical, firmware, mechanical, audio and optical systems
  • Experience integrating and delivering one or more of these technologies: displays, optics, silicon, sensors, thermal systems
  • Experience in rapid prototyping and creating proof of concept models to share ideas and improve architectural decisions
  • Communication experience working with Product Development engineers, Product Managers and other hardware/software cross-functional teams
  • Experience working with partnerships teams and external partners at both a supply base and product level
Preferred Qualification
  • MS in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering other related technical field or equivalent experience
  • Experience in firmware development, programming, computer vision, OS, game development, and complex sensing systems
  • Experience modeling system power, and using those models to inform trade-offs against key architectural decisions (e.g. battery life, thermals, silicon roadmaps, power load profiles)
  • Understanding of memory subsystems including mass storage and filesystem as well as volatile memory and memory management and their impacts on overall system performance
  • Experience with Virtual/Augmented reality or systems aimed at capturing/processing/delivering audio visual, IMU or other positional data streams
  • Experience creating system models to analyze system compute, latency and communication interface bandwidths across multiple subsystems within a heterogeneous compute environment in order to define the system architecture to meet the overall goals of the product definition
  • Working knowledge across the following areas with experience in at least one:
  • Health: Heart Rate, Blood Pressure, Sp02, Pedometer, EMG
  • Imaging: interfaces, optical, sensors, modules, ISP and algorithm fundamentals, CV/ML
  • Audio: interfaces, sound file recording and reproduction (channel based, HOA etc.), multi mic topologies, beam forming, blind source separation, natural language processing
  • Communications: network impacts on latency, throughput and Jitter, VoIP, video communications
  • General Machine learning (DNN, CNN, RNN)
  • Experience with influencing silicon vendors roadmaps and SOC features sets with emphasis on using advanced IP in the realms of Machine Learning, Graphics and Imaging
  • Experience in additional fields such as programming, computer vision, OS, game development
Facebook is proud to be an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Facebook is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our recruiting process. If you need any assistance or accommodations due to a disability, please let us know at accommodations-ext@fb.com.