Senior Machine Learning Engineer I

Rocket Lab · Tucson, AZ · 1 wk ago

On-siteEngineeringFull-time

Rocket Lab is the end-to-end space company building rockets, spacecraft, and critical subsystems that keep the world connected, protected, and expand humanity’s reach to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Our Space Systems team builds complete spacecraft, precision payloads, and subsystems—including solar panels, flight software, star trackers, optical systems, separation systems, and radios—that have enabled more than 1,700 missions, from interplanetary exploration to national security and defense.

About the role

As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer I based at our Optical Systems sites in Tucson, AZ, you will support Tranche 3 of the U.S. Space Development Agency's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) by building deep learning neural networks for advanced Electro-Optical (EO/IR) image processing.

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 other researchers and engineers on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and computer vision.
Perform rapid prototyping and enhanced development to be integrated into operational systems.
Perform troubleshooting, bug fixes, and maintenance of existing and new systems.
Stay current with ML research and evaluate new tools, frameworks, and techniques.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree and 5+ years of experience, master’s degree and 3+ years of experience, or a Ph.D. in Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, or related field.
Strong background in machine learning including model selection, architecting, training, validation, testing, and deployment.
Experience in building deep learning neural networks for computer vision, image processing, or video analysis (e.g., object detection, image segmentation, and 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 is 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.

Work environment

This position may require prolonged periods of sitting, standing, walking, computer work, and occasional exposure to moderate levels of noise, dust, and fumes in production areas.