Software Engineer: Perception (II,III)
Mid-career (II/III) software engineer joining Lodestar's perception/machine-vision team in Los Angeles to build and optimize computer vision and ML models that detect, classify, and track unknown space targets in real time for the MITHRIL autonomous spacecraft-protection platform, including edge/GPU optimization, relative-pose prediction, and integration into mission simulation and autonomy pipeli
- Compensation
- $115K–$200K / yr
- Location
- Los Angeles, US
- Work setup
- Not specified
- Seniority
- Not specified
- Employment
- Full time
- Experience
- 2+ years
- Category
- Software engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- 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)
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in AI/ML, Computer Science, Robotics, or related field, or equivalent experience
- 2-5 years of professional experience in machine learning, robotics, computer vision, or related field (internships, research placements, substantial projects count)
- Demonstrated ability to take an ML model from training through to evaluation
- Broad understanding of modern perception systems and their architecture
- Exposure to sensor measurements from RADAR, electro-optical, RF sensors, and/or LIDAR
- Experience developing or deploying ML models to real-time or resource-constrained systems
- ITAR: must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, protected individual, or eligible for required U.S. Department of State authorizations
Nice to have
- Familiarity with image processing techniques (feature extraction, segmentation, filtering, stereo matching) for 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)
- 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
Full description
About Lodestar
Lodestar's mission is to develop the first "Protect and Defend" capability for high-value space assets in orbit. Our flagship product MITHRIL is the critical hardware & software necessary to augment any off-the-shelf spacecraft with the ability to autonomously detect, characterise, and reversibly neutralise orbital threats. By building on the proven space heritage of our best-in-class satellite-bus partners and fully integrating MITHRIL as a single platform, we deliver a fully autonomous end-to-end protection spacecraft service.
About the Job
As a Software Engineer II/III - Perception at Lodestar, you’ll be joining the perception and machine vision teams to rapidly grow our vision and perception models at MITHRIL’s center.
You'll help build and refine algorithms that detect, classify and understand unknown space targets in real time. Working alongside senior perception engineers, you'll combine computer vision, image processing and machine learning to develop the custom models that underpin autonomous decision-making in complex and uncertain space environments.
This is an mid-career role. We're looking for strong fundamentals and fast learning, and you'll be given real ownership early with the support to grow into it.
We proudly have an "extreme ownership" oriented engineering culture.
What You’ll Do
- 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 our existing models for edge computing, and develop new components with guidance from the perception leads
- Help develop and test our 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 our perception tooling, model training infrastructure, and evaluation frameworks
- Collaborate across the autonomy, estimation, and mission software teams to support perception fidelity, performance, and scalability
Basic Qualifications
- 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)