Senior Vision Systems Engineer - Space IR Tracking | Equity

etc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 160,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity participation

Healthcare

Flexible PTO

Professional development opportunities

Job summary

Exploration Technology Corp is hiring a hands-on Vision Systems Engineer to own the detection, tracking, and target discrimination software for a space-based IR sensing program supporting US national security missions.

You will build the full pipeline from detection through tracking, state estimation, and discrimination, running on embedded space hardware under real-time constraints. Expect collaboration across hardware teams on ROIC interfaces and high-speed data paths.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in the specified technical field is required; advanced degree preferred for senior applicants.
• 5 years of professional experience in IR sensor systems, electro-optical payloads, or space-based imaging, preferably in defense or national security programs.
• Strong experience with Kalman filtering, multi-target tracking, and data association methods.

Responsibilities

• Own the vision software stack for autonomous terminal guidance on a space mission.
• Design and validate detection, tracking, state estimation, and discrimination pipelines for real-time embedded use.
• Develop lightweight CNN classifiers for real-time embedded inference.
• Integrate algorithms into end-to-end IR scene simulations and hardware-in-the-loop validation.
• Collaborate with hardware teams on detector readout architectures and signal chains.

Skills

Kalman filters

Multi-target tracking

Data association

Python

MATLAB

C/C++

CNNs / lightweight ML

Image processing

Embedded systems

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Physics, Aerospace Engineering, or related technical field

Tools

Embedded FPGA

Job description

Exploration Technology Corp is hiring a hands-on Vision Systems Engineer to own the detection, tracking, and target discrimination software for a space-based IR sensing program supporting US national security missions.

You will build the full pipeline from detection through tracking, state estimation, and discrimination, running on embedded space hardware under real-time constraints. Expect collaboration across hardware teams on ROIC interfaces and high-speed data paths.