Software Engineer, Perception (I)

About the Role

As a Software Engineer I - Perception at Lodestar, you will join the perception and machine vision teams to rapidly grow vision and perception models. You will help build and refine algorithms that detect, classify, and understand unknown space targets in real time. Working alongside senior perception engineers, you will combine computer vision, image processing, and machine learning to develop custom models that underpin autonomous decision-making in complex and uncertain space environments. This is an early-career role focused on strong fundamentals and fast learning.

Key Responsibilities

• Contribute to the perception system at the core of Lodestar's autonomy software suite.
• Work through the full lifecycle of perception algorithms, including literature review, training, evaluation, optimization, and deployment.
• Build on and optimize existing models for edge computing, and develop new components with guidance.
• Develop and test methods for predicting the relative pose of dynamic space targets in harsh and unpredictable visual environments.
• Integrate perception models into mission simulation environments and real-time autonomy pipelines.
• Contribute to the design of realistic sensor models and digital twins to improve perception fidelity in mission scenarios.
• Maintain and extend perception tooling, model training infrastructure, and evaluation frameworks.
• Collaborate across autonomy, estimation, and mission software teams to support perception fidelity, performance, and scalability.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Solid software engineering skills in Python.
• Working proficiency in C++.
• Foundational DNN/ML knowledge.
• Hands-on experience with computer vision or image processing libraries (e.g., OpenCV).
• Demonstrated ability to take an ML model from training through to evaluation.
• Experience with Linux, Git, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Comfortable with containerization tools such as Docker and Kubernetes.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in AI/ML, Computer Science, Robotics, a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 0–2 years of professional experience in machine learning, robotics, computer vision, or a related field. Internships, research placements, and substantial academic or personal projects count.

Preferred Skills & Experience

• Experience developing or deploying ML models to real-time or resource-constrained systems.
• Broad understanding of modern perception systems and their architecture.
• Exposure to sensor measurements from RADAR, electro-optical sensors, RF sensors, or LIDAR.
• Familiarity with image processing techniques (e.g., feature extraction, segmentation, filtering, stereo matching) to support 3D reconstruction and target classification.
• Experience optimizing neural networks or geometric algorithms using CUDA kernels, TensorRT, or other GPU acceleration frameworks.
• Exposure to distributed training or cloud-based scaling of ML models (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Understanding of networking and communication protocols for distributed autonomy systems.

ITAR Requirements

To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.