Vision Systems Engineer: Space IR & Real-Time Tracking

Exploration Technology Group; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity participation

Healthcare

Flexible PTO

Professional development opportunities

Job summary

Exploration Technology Group in San Francisco, CA, is hiring a Vision Systems Engineer to own the detection, tracking, and target discrimination software stack for a space-based IR sensing program supporting national security missions. The role focuses on turning LWIR imagery into high-confidence track and guidance outputs on embedded hardware, under stringent real-time constraints.

Candidates should have a strong background in Kalman filtering, multi-target tracking, and CNN-based

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a technical field is required; advanced degree preferred.
• 5+ years of professional IR sensor or space-based imaging experience.

Responsibilities

• Own the vision software stack for autonomous terminal guidance on embedded space hardware.
• Develop detection, tracking, state estimation, and discrimination pipelines.
• Implement adaptive detection against Earth background and clutter; track-before-detect for high-velocity geometries.
• Design multi-target tracking with Kalman filters and data association (JPDA/MHT).
• Train lightweight CNN classifiers for real-time discrimination using radiometric imagery.
• Integrate algorithms into IR scene simulation, generate synthetic data, and validate against requirements.
• Coordinate detector readout architectures with electronics teams, enabling high-speed data paths.

Skills

Kalman filters

Multi-target tracking

CNN classifiers

Real-time embedded inference

Radiometric modeling

Signal processing

Education

Bachelor's degree in Software Eng./Electrical Eng./Optical Eng./Physics/Aerospace Eng.

Tools

MATLAB

Python

C++

CNNs

Job description

Exploration Technology Group in San Francisco, CA, is hiring a Vision Systems Engineer to own the detection, tracking, and target discrimination software stack for a space-based IR sensing program supporting national security missions. The role focuses on turning LWIR imagery into high-confidence track and guidance outputs on embedded hardware, under stringent real-time constraints.

Candidates should have a strong background in Kalman filtering, multi-target tracking, and CNN-based