Junior Perception Software Engineer — Space Autonomy

Inflection Managing Partner, Inc.; Los Angeles, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 99,000 - 174,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity incentives

Flexible PTO

Medical coverage

Dental coverage

Vision coverage

401(k) with company match

Los Angeles

Job summary

Lodestar seeks a Software Engineer I - Perception to join the perception and machine vision teams to rapidly grow models at MITHRIL’s center. You’ll help build and refine algorithms that detect, classify and understand unknown space targets in real time, combining CV, image processing and ML to enable autonomous decisions in harsh space environments.

This is an early-career role with strong fundamentals and fast learning, giving you real ownership early within an extreme ownership culture.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in AI/ML, CS, Robotics or related field, or equivalent experience.
• 0–2 years in ML, robotics, CV or related field; internships/academic projects count.
• Solid Python skills and working C++ familiarity.
• Foundational ML/DNN knowledge with OpenCV or similar libraries.
• Experience taking ML models from training to evaluation, in any setting.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the perception system at the core of Lodestar's autonomy software suite.
• Work through the full lifecycle of perception algorithms with senior engineers.
• Build on and optimize models for edge computing and develop new components.
• Help develop methods for predicting relative poses of dynamic space targets.
• Integrate perception models into simulation environments and real-time pipelines.
• Contribute to sensor model design and digital twins to boost fidelity.
• Maintain and extend perception tooling and training infrastructure.
• Collaborate across teams to support fidelity, performance, and scalability.

Skills

Python

C++

OpenCV

DNN/ML basics

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s in AI/ML/CS/Robotics

Tools

CUDA kernels

TensorRT

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Lodestar seeks a Software Engineer I - Perception to join the perception and machine vision teams to rapidly grow models at MITHRIL’s center. You’ll help build and refine algorithms that detect, classify and understand unknown space targets in real time, combining CV, image processing and ML to enable autonomous decisions in harsh space environments.

This is an early-career role with strong fundamentals and fast learning, giving you real ownership early within an extreme ownership culture.