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Rocket Lab is an end-to-end space company building rockets, spacecraft, and critical subsystems. The Optical Systems division focuses on mission-critical space domain and Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) challenges for Department of Defense and Intelligence Community customers.
As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer I, you will support the U.S. Space Development Agency's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) program by building deep learning neural networks for advanced Electro-Optical (EO/IR) image processing applications.
Key responsibilities include:
- Design, train, and deploy machine learning models for optical systems applications
- Build and maintain ML pipelines for data ingestion, feature engineering, training, and inference
- Develop deep learning neural networks for computer vision, image processing, and video analysis tasks such as object detection, image segmentation, and tracking
- Collaborate with researchers and engineers on AI, machine learning, and computer vision initiatives
- Perform rapid prototyping and enhanced development for integration into operational systems
- Troubleshoot, debug, and maintain existing and new systems
- Stay current with ML research and evaluate new tools, frameworks, and techniques
Required qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree with 5+ years of ML experience, Master's degree with 3+ years, or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, or related field
- Strong background in machine learning: model selection, architecting, training, validation, testing, and deployment
- Experience building deep learning neural networks for computer vision, image processing, or video analysis
- Strong mathematics background, particularly linear algebra
- Proficiency in Python and deep learning libraries (Keras, TensorFlow, PyTorch)
- Software engineering fundamentals: version control, testing, CI/CD, containerization
- U.S. citizenship required
- Ability to obtain and maintain U.S. Government Security Clearance
Nice-to-have skills include C/C++/Rust proficiency, experience curating datasets for deep learning, and TS/SCI security clearance. Compensation includes competitive base pay plus company stock.
