Head of Research & Development (AI / Computer Vision)

Location: United States
Compensation: $300-400k/year salary + equity
Commitment: Full-time

About Panoptyc

At Panoptyc, we're on a mission to revolutionize loss prevention. Using visual AI and manual reviewers, we help retailers detect theft in over 15,000 markets across the United States. From Fortune 500 giants to local businesses, our impact is far-reaching. As a fully remote, rapidly growing team, we're excited to invite top talent worldwide to join us in reshaping the future of retail security.

We're looking for a technical trailblazer—a hacker, builder, and visionary leader who can turn bold ideas into working systems. As our Head of R&D, you'll lead the charge on building next-gen AI and computer vision products from 0 to 1, managing a lean team of engineers while still getting your hands dirty on high-impact technical work.

You’ll prototype quickly, validate in the field, and guide the evolution of our most ambitious products—starting with theft detection in retail environments used by thousands of stores.

What You’ll Do

• Lead and manage a small team of engineers to prototype and productize computer vision and AI systems

• Personally build and own early-stage proofs-of-concept, rapidly iterating and validating in the real world

• Define and prioritize the technical R&D roadmap in collaboration with product and business leads

• Architect scalable systems that transition from lab to production (edge and/or cloud)

• Vet new models, data architectures, and hardware deployments

• Be a key thought partner in setting technical direction for entirely new product lines

What We’re Looking For

• 8+ years in engineering roles with deep experience in AI, ML, and computer vision

• Proven track record of building 0 → 1 products or technical breakthroughs that went to market

• Strong hands-on skills with ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow), video analytics (e.g., OpenCV), and deployment tooling (e.g., ONNX, Triton, containers)

• Comfortable leading and scaling small engineering teams

• Hacker energy: fast, creative, scrappy, and resourceful

• Experience creating data pipelines for and categorizing vast sets of video training data.

• Bonus: Experience with edge computing, streaming pipelines, or hardware deployment in retail, robotics, or surveillance settings

Why This Role?

• Lead and shape R&D at a company already deployed in 20,000+ stores and catching hundreds of thousands of thefts a year

• Work with Fortune 500 retailers solving real-world loss prevention with cutting-edge AI

• Huge ownership: lead products with the potential to become $500M+ businesses

• Fast-moving, well-resourced team with real traction

Ready to build real-world AI that scales? Apply now. Let’s talk.