Principal Machine Learning Engineer (EO/IR Image Analysis) Verified today
About Rocket Lab
Rocket Lab is an end-to-end space company building rockets, spacecraft, and subsystems. The Space Systems division delivers payloads and components for missions to the Moon and Mars, working with NASA, the Space Development Agency, and the U.S. Space Force.
About this role
Rocket Lab Optical Systems develops mission-critical space domain and Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance solutions. As a Principal Machine Learning Engineer in Tucson, AZ, you will support the U.S. Space Development Agency's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) Tranche 3 by building deep learning neural networks for advanced Electro-Optical (EO/IR) image processing.
What you will do
- 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 and engineers on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and computer vision
- Perform rapid prototyping and enhanced development for integration into operational systems
- Troubleshoot, fix bugs, and maintain existing and new systems
- Stay current with ML research and evaluate new tools, frameworks, and techniques
What we're looking for
- Bachelor's degree with 12+ years of experience, or Master's degree or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, or related field
- Strong background in machine learning: model selection, architecture, training, validation, testing, and deployment
- Experience building deep learning neural networks for computer vision, image processing, or video analysis (e.g., object detection, image segmentation, tracking)
- Strong math background, particularly linear algebra
- Proficiency in Python
- Experience with deep learning libraries (Keras, TensorFlow, PyTorch, etc.)
- Software engineering fundamentals: version control, testing, CI/CD, containerization
- U.S. citizenship required due to program requirements
- Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government Security Clearance
Nice to have
- Proficiency in C/C++/Rust
- Experience curating quality, real-world datasets for training deep learning models
- TS/SCI security clearance