Description:

Provides assistance and expertise in various areas of research such as calibration of instrumentation, equipment maintenance and repair, preparation of samples for testing, monitoring of safety equipment and procedures, development and fabrication of prototype equipment, recording of test results, and basic analyses of data.

1. Ensures experiments are preformed according to specification.
2. May make practical technical recommendations to changes in procedures, equipment, or prototype design.
3. Applies basic skill and develops advanced skills.
4. Often assists with, and may perform, some advanced functions.
5. Solves most routine problems while referring more complex questions to higher levels.
6. Receives direct supervision but is expected to select from a variety of standard procedures to complete tasks.

Additional Position Information
Official Job Title: Research Technician 2
Working Job Title: Research Engineer

Join a team building advanced computer vision systems that model and analyze real-world infrastructure through advances in 3D vision and AI. Our mission is to transform how physical infrastructure environments are documented, monitored, and maintained. You’ll contribute to research and development efforts focused on creating accurate digital twins, improving anomaly detection models, and integrating visual data with spatial sensors like RGBD and LiDAR.

This Research Engineer (Research Technician 2) role offers the opportunity to work across the full stack of data collection, model training, evaluation, software engineering, and deployment. The role is part-time 20 hours/week and ideal for those currently pursuing Masters or PhD degrees. The Research Engineer reports to Dr. Vedhus Hoskere in the College of Engineering/Civil and Environmental Engineering who may also be contacted for questions regarding the position (vhoskere@uh.edu)

Initial appointments will be for one year with the possibility of yearly renewal subject to funding availability.

Responsibilities
• Design and implement deep learning architectures, AI agent pipelines, and computer vision algorithms to achieve project goals (33%)
• Conduct full stack development efforts including UI/UX, code maintenance, and deployment pipelines (33%)
• Evaluate and refine AI models using annotated data and real-world image datasets (10%)
• Curate multimodal real and synthetic datasets, including photogrammetry, LiDAR, and depth cameras, to build scalable analysis pipelines (10%)
• Conduct data collection for validation of developed approaches (may involve occasional travel) (2%)
• Collaborate with graduate and undergraduate student researchers (5%)
• Perform other duties as assigned (7%)

Minimum Qualifications
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, electrical engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, data science, artificial intelligence, or a related field
• Strong Python programming skills
• 1-3 years software engineering experience
• Practical experience with computer vision, ML, or 3D scene understanding
• Ability to work collaboratively across technical teams
• US Citizen

Preferred
• Master’s degree in computer science, electrical engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, data science, artificial intelligence, or a related field
• Experience with photogrammetry, LiDAR alignment, or large-scale 3D data, and deep learning-based 3D vision and graphics
• Familiarity with image annotation tools and dataset iteration workflows
• Contributions to open-source, research publications, or production ML systems

MQ: Associate's Degree with 6 months experience.

Due to the terms of the funding grant, only U.S. citizens are eligible for this position.

All positions at the University of Houston-System are security sensitive and will require a criminal history check.

The University of Houston System and its universities are Equal Opportunity Institutions. Everyone is encouraged to apply.