Senior ML Engineer II — Space Optics & CV

Rocket Lab; Chantilly (VA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Rocket Lab’s Optical Systems division in Chantilly, VA seeks a Senior Machine Learning Engineer II to build and deploy ML models for space domain image processing. You will develop end-to-end ML pipelines, collaborate with researchers, and keep pace with state-of-the-art ML methods. U.S.

citizenship and ability to obtain security clearance are required. Ideal candidates have 8+ years (or equivalent) in ML, strong Python and DL frameworks, and a background in computer vision.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree and 8+ years of exp, or a Master's with 6+ yrs, or PhD in CS/ECE/ME/Physics, or related field.
• Experience with ML model selection, training, validation, testing and deployment.
• Experience building deep learning models for computer vision, image processing, or video analysis.
• Proficiency in Python and DL libraries (Keras, TensorFlow, PyTorch).
• Software engineering fundamentals: version control, testing, CI/CD, containerization.
• U.S. citizenship required for program access and ability to obtain security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Contribute your experience to developing solutions for real-world problems.
• Design, train, and deploy machine learning 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.
• Rapid prototyping to be integrated into operational systems.
• Troubleshoot, fix bugs, and maintain existing and new systems.
• Stay current with ML research and evaluate new tools, frameworks, and techniques

Skills

Python

DL libraries (Keras, TF, PyTorch)

Software engineering basics

ML fundamentals (model selection, etc)

CV / image processing / video analysis

U.S. citizenship

Security clearance readiness

C/C++/Rust (nice to have)

Education

Bachelor's + 8+ yrs OR Master's + 6+ yrs OR PhD in CS/ECE/ME/Physics

Tools

N/A

Job description

Rocket Lab’s Optical Systems division in Chantilly, VA seeks a Senior Machine Learning Engineer II to build and deploy ML models for space domain image processing. You will develop end-to-end ML pipelines, collaborate with researchers, and keep pace with state-of-the-art ML methods. U.S.

citizenship and ability to obtain security clearance are required. Ideal candidates have 8+ years (or equivalent) in ML, strong Python and DL frameworks, and a background in computer vision.