Perception Software Engineer I - Space Autonomy

Lodestar Space; El Segundo (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 with company

Los Angeles

Job summary

Lodestar Space in the United States is seeking an entry-level Software Engineer I - Perception to join the perception and machine vision teams. You will help build and refine real-time vision models to detect, classify, and understand unknown space targets in challenging environments.

You will work with senior engineers on computer vision, image processing and ML models, with ownership and growth opportunities in a fast-paced, extreme-ownership culture.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in AI/ML, Computer Science, Robotics or related field, or equivalent experience.
• 0–2 years of professional experience in ML, robotics, CV, or related field.
• Solid Python software engineering skills and working proficiency in C++.
• Foundational DNN/ML knowledge with OpenCV or similar libraries.
• Ability to take an ML model from training to evaluation in real settings.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the perception system at the core of Lodestar's autonomy software.
• Follow full lifecycle of perception algorithms: literature review, training, evaluation, optimisation, deployment.
• Build and optimise edge computing models and new components under guidance.
• Develop and test methods for predicting relative pose of space targets in challenging visuals.
• Integrate perception models into simulation environments and real-time pipelines.
• Design sensor models and digital twins to improve perception fidelity.
• Maintain perception tooling, training infrastructure, and evaluation frameworks.
• Collaborate with autonomy, estimation, and mission software teams to ensure fidelity and scalability.

Skills

Python

C++

Computer vision

ML model training

Real-time ML

OpenCV

Tools

Linux

Git

CI/CD

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Lodestar Space in the United States is seeking an entry-level Software Engineer I - Perception to join the perception and machine vision teams. You will help build and refine real-time vision models to detect, classify, and understand unknown space targets in challenging environments.

You will work with senior engineers on computer vision, image processing and ML models, with ownership and growth opportunities in a fast-paced, extreme-ownership culture.