Software Engineer - Perception

About Lodestar

Lodestar's mission is to develop the first "Protect and Defend" capability for high-value space assets in orbit. Our flagship product   MITHRIL   is the critical hardware & software necessary to augment any off-the-shelf spacecraft with the ability to autonomously detect, characterise, and reversibly neutralise orbital threats. By building on the proven space heritage of our best-in-class satellite-bus partners and fully integrating   MITHRIL   as a single platform, we deliver a fully autonomous end-to-end protection spacecraft service.

About the Job

As a   Software Engineer - Perception   at Lodestar you’ll be joining the perception and machine visions teams to rapidly grow our vision and perception models at   MITHRIL’s   center. You’ll focus on researching and building algorithms to detect, classify and understand unknown space targets in real-time. By combining computer vision, image processing and machine learning, you’ll develop custom models - providing the foundation for autonomous decision-making in complex and uncertain space environments.

What You’ll Do

• Scoping architecture for the perception system core to Lodestar’s autonomy software suite
• Research and adapt novel perception algorithms - everything from lit. review, through training and evaluation, to optimisation and deployment
• Design, develop ML algorithms from the ground up, in addition to build on and optimizing our existing models for edge computing
• Further develop our robust methods for predicting relative pose of dynamic space targets in harsh and unpredictable visual environments
• Integrate perception models into mission simulation environments and real-time autonomy pipelines
• Contribute to the design of realistic sensor models and digital twins to improve perception fidelity in mission scenarios
• Own perception tooling, model training infrastructure, and evaluation frameworks for ongoing development and deployment
• Collaborate across autonomy, estimation, and mission software teams to ensure perception fidelity, performance, and scalability

Basic Qualifications

Preferred Skills & Experience

Additional Requirements

ITAR Requirements

To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR   here .

Compensation & Benefits

(E1) Junior Software Engineer : $115,000 - $140,000 / year

Additional Information

Compensation bands are determined by role, level, location, and alignment with market data. Individual level and base pay is determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on job-related skills, education, experience, technical capabilities and internal equity. In addition to base salary, for full-time hires, you may also be eligible for long-term incentives, in the   form of stock options   , and access to   medical, vision and dental coverage , as well as   access to a 401(k) retirement plan .

Lodestar is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Lodestar is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin / ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.