Principal ML Engineer – Space Optics (Equity)

Rocket Lab USA; Chantilly (VA); On-site; USD 153,000 - 204,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock purchase program

Health/dental/vision plans

Paid vacation & sick time

11 paid holidays

Retirement plan with company match

Job summary

Rocket Lab USA, a leading space company, seeks a Principal Machine Learning Engineer for its Optical Systems division in Chantilly, VA. You will build deep learning models for electro-optical image processing, develop end-to-end ML pipelines, and collaborate with AI researchers to solve mission-critical space domain challenges.

The role requires a strong ML/CV background, proficiency in Python, and the ability to obtain a U.S. government security clearance; citizenship is required.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree and 12+ years of experience in Computer Science, Electrical/Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics or related field.
• Strong background in ML including model selection, architecting, training, validation, testing and deployment.
• Experience building deep learning networks for computer vision, image processing, or video analysis (object detection, segmentation, tracking).
• Citizenship and ability to obtain a U.S. Government Security Clearance.

Responsibilities

• Contribute experience to developing solutions for real-world problems.
• Design, train, and deploy ML models for Optical Systems applications
• Build and maintain ML pipelines for data ingestion, feature engineering, training, and inference.
• Collaborate with researchers/engineers on AI, ML, and computer vision.
• Perform rapid prototyping and integration into operational systems.
• Perform troubleshooting, bug fixes, and maintenance of systems.
• Stay current with ML research and evaluate new tools and frameworks.

Skills

ML expertise

Deep learning

Computer vision

Python

Model deployment

Education

Bachelor's degree + 12+ years exp

Tools

Keras

TensorFlow

PyTorch

Job description

Rocket Lab USA, a leading space company, seeks a Principal Machine Learning Engineer for its Optical Systems division in Chantilly, VA. You will build deep learning models for electro-optical image processing, develop end-to-end ML pipelines, and collaborate with AI researchers to solve mission-critical space domain challenges.

The role requires a strong ML/CV background, proficiency in Python, and the ability to obtain a U.S. government security clearance; citizenship is required.