Software Engineer, Perception (I)

About the Role

Software Engineer I - Perception at Lodestar.

Key Responsibilities

• Contribute to the perception system at the core of Lodestar's autonomy software suite.
• Work through the full lifecycle of perception algorithms alongside senior engineers, including literature review, training, evaluation, optimisation, and deployment.
• Build on and optimise existing models for edge computing, and develop new components with guidance from the perception leads.
• Help 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 the autonomy, estimation, and mission software teams to support perception fidelity, performance, and scalability.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Solid software engineering skills in Python, and working proficiency in C++.
• Foundational DNN/ML knowledge and 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, in any setting (coursework, research, or industry).
• Early-career role, focusing on strong fundamentals and fast learning.

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 optimising 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).
• Experience with Linux, Git, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Comfortable with containerisation tools such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Understanding of networking and communication protocols for distributed autonomy systems.

ITAR Requirements

• 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 required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Compensation

• Pay Range:
• (P1) Entry: $99,000 - $133,000 / year
• (P2) Developing: $115,000 - $174,000 / year
• Meaningful equity incentives.
• Flexible PTO.
• Comprehensive medical, dental & vision coverage.
• 401(k) retirement plan with company match.