Autonomy Software Engineer II — Onboard AI for Spacecraft

PassFort; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 115,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity incentives

Flexible PTO

Medical, dental & vision coverage

401(k) retirement plan

LA location

Job summary

Lodestar is hiring a Software Engineer II - On-board Autonomy to develop decision-making systems for autonomous spacecraft. You will design models that reason about context, capabilities, and environment to select actions in real time.

The role emphasizes end-to-end ML workflows from research to deployment in space-grade environments. You will work in a culture centered on extreme ownership, tackling perception-to-action pipelines and ensuring resilient autonomous behavior across challenging

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or related field.
• 2+ years of industry experience in autonomy, decision-making, or control for aerospace/robotics.
• Strong proficiency in C++ and Python and DL frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow).
• Demonstrated experience applying ML to decision-making or control tasks.
• Experience with real-time systems, planning, or reinforcement learning.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement on-board decision-making models for real-time autonomy.
• Integrate perception, state estimation, and intent prediction for mission objectives.
• Research and deploy ML models from literature through training to deployment.
• Develop adaptive decision models for changing mission contexts.
• Build testing frameworks and deployment pipelines for space missions.
• Support autonomy in communications-limited or time-critical scenarios.

Skills

C++ proficiency

Python proficiency

Machine learning for autonomy

Real-time systems

Multi-agent decision-making

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS/ML/Robotics

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Linux

Git

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Job description

Lodestar is hiring a Software Engineer II - On-board Autonomy to develop decision-making systems for autonomous spacecraft. You will design models that reason about context, capabilities, and environment to select actions in real time.

The role emphasizes end-to-end ML workflows from research to deployment in space-grade environments. You will work in a culture centered on extreme ownership, tackling perception-to-action pipelines and ensuring resilient autonomous behavior across challenging