We’re hiring a top-tier Vision Applications Engineer in China—someone who can walk up to a nasty inspection problem (reflective metal, transparent plastic, motion blur, awkward geometry, cramped mounting, unstable presentation) and immediately start forming a lighting + optics strategy that makes the problem solvable. You’ll be the person customers remember: the one who makes “impossible” inspections suddenly look obvious.

This role is vision-first. You don’t need to be a controls engineer. You do need to be an exceptional optical/lighting problem solver who can also own field execution: customer communication, on-site deployments, training, and project delivery.

Why this role is exciting

• Solve the hardest vision problems in the world: The customers we work with bring problems that break traditional machine vision. You’ll be in the deep end.
• Work with cutting-edge AI + real factories: You’ll turn great imaging into great AI outcomes—and see the impact immediately on yield and downtime.
• High autonomy, high trust: You’ll be the expert in the room, leading technical strategy and owning outcomes end-to-end.
• Win against incumbents: You’ll know the competitive landscape (Cognex, Keyence, HALCON, Hikvision, etc.) and use that knowledge to help us close deals and expand deployments.
• Travel + variety: New lines, new parts, new weird optical phenomena—this role stays interesting.

What You’ll Own

• Vision strategy: optics + lighting (core of the role)

You will design and iterate the imaging solution that makes inspection reliable:

• Select and tune lighting for challenging surfaces and geometries:

• bright field / dark field, coaxial, dome, diffuse, low-angle, structured light, line lights, spot/point, backlight, multisource setups

• polarization (cross/parallel), glare suppression, specular management

• strobed lighting vs continuous, high-speed exposure strategies, motion-freezing

• “2.5D” techniques: photometric-style approaches, multi-angle illumination, gradient/shape enhancement

• Select and deploy lenses and optical elements:

• telecentric, macro, high-NA, long working distance, wide-angle vs narrow, Scheimpflug (tilt) where appropriate

• filters (bandpass, long-pass/short-pass), polarizers, diffusers, beam splitters

• mirrors/prisms for impossible mounting angles and constrained spaces

• Push beyond visible light when needed:

• IR / NIR / SWIR (and other spectral strategies), multispectral approaches, fluorescence-style thinking where relevant

• Diagnose and solve “weird” vision failure modes:

• reflectivity, transparency, subsurface features, moiré, aliasing, lens flare/ghosting, vibration blur, rolling shutter artifacts, shadowing/occlusion, contamination drift

The bar: you can often tease out a workable imaging approach just by looking at the part + environment , then validate it quickly in the field.

• Project ownership: deploy, stabilize, scale

• Own customer deployments end-to-end: planning, on-site execution, training, follow-through.

• Drive fast iteration cycles: image capture → lighting/lens adjustments → validation → production-ready setup.

• Train customer teams (process/quality/ops) on:

• daily operation, basic troubleshooting, re-validation after maintenance, and how to keep image quality stable.

• Create clear documentation and “golden configs” that make future rollouts faster.

• Competitive expertise: help us win

• Maintain a strong working knowledge of the machine vision ecosystem and competitor offerings:

• Cognex, Keyence, HALCON/MVTec, Hikrobot/Hikvision, and other common players.

• Participate in pre-sales technical discovery and solutioning:

• help position Overview.ai intelligently, identify where incumbents will fail, and propose imaging strategies that make our AI shine.

• Feed market intelligence back into product and go-to-market teams.

Required Who you are

• Deep, hands-on machine vision experience with a heavy emphasis on lighting + optics (not just “camera setup”)

• Track record solving difficult inspections in production environments (reflective/transparent, tight geometry, high speed, variable presentation)

• Strong practical knowledge of the lighting and lens landscape:

• you understand the tradeoffs and failure modes, not just the catalog names

• Ability to operate independently in factories and own outcomes

• Mandarin fluency (native or near-native)

• Working English for collaboration with global engineering/product teams

• Strong communication skills: you can explain optical strategies clearly to customers and teammates

Strong preferences

• Experience building vision solutions across multiple industries (electronics, automotive, connectors, batteries, packaging, etc.)
• Experience with advanced optical methods (telecentric, polarization, structured light, multi-angle, spectral techniques)
• Comfort running field experiments quickly and methodically (hypothesis → test → iterate)

What Success Looks Like

• Customers trust you as the vision expert who can solve “impossible” inspections.
• You consistently deliver stable, repeatable imaging configurations that make AI performance excellent.
• You help win deals by out-thinking incumbents and demonstrating superior solutioning.
• You turn one-off optical victories into reusable playbooks, reference setups, and standards.

Why Overview.ai (why top candidates join)

• Extreme growth + real-world impact: We’re not building demos. We’re deploying AI systems on real production lines, at scale.
• Talent density: You’ll work with world-class engineers and operators across AI, embedded systems, and enterprise deployment.
• Front-row seat to the AI manufacturing wave: This is one of the biggest transformations happening in industry right now.
• Ownership: In this role, your work directly changes the trajectory of the company. Great hiring = winning.
• Global exposure: You’ll recruit for roles that touch the most advanced customers and factories in the world.