Staff Software Engineer, Perception (R5421)

Washington, D.C.full time

On Site

senior

H1B: no

Shield Staff Software Engineer on the Perception team leads technical development of advanced machine learning solutions for autonomous systems. This role involves owning challenging technical problems, driving architecture and model development, and mentoring engineers.

Responsibilities

Model Development – Design, train, fine-tune, and maintain state-of-the-art vision, vision-language, and vision-language-action models that improve perception and decision-making for autonomous systems.
Data Pipelines & Model Training – Build scalable data pipelines, supervised fine-tuning (SFT) workflows, and evaluation loops that continuously improve model performance on mission-relevant tasks.
Model Deployment & Optimization – Deploy and optimize machine learning models for embedded hardware using technologies such as ONNX, TensorRT, and hardware-accelerated inference frameworks.
Perception & Autonomy Applications – Apply modern machine learning techniques to solve challenging perception and autonomy problems across aerial and other autonomous systems operating in complex, real-world environments.
Research-to-Production – Translate cutting-edge machine learning research into production-ready capabilities by balancing model performance, robustness, computational efficiency, and operational reliability.
Cross-functional Collaboration – Partner closely with perception, autonomy, platform, and software engineering teams to integrate machine learning capabilities into mission-ready autonomous systems.
Model Evaluation & Validation – Develop benchmarks, testing methodologies, and evaluation frameworks to measure model performance, identify failure modes, and guide future improvements.
Continuous Improvement – Improve training infrastructure, developer tooling, deployment workflows, and model lifecycle management to accelerate experimentation and production delivery.

Qualification

Proficiency in C++ and PythonAbility to obtain a SECRET clearanceTemporary employee offer package

Required

Typically requires a minimum of 7 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 6 years and a Master’s degree; or 4 years with a PhD; or equivalent work experience.
Expertise of machine learning fundamentals.
Experience training an deploying ML models for computer vision in a production setting.
Strong understanding of 3D vision problems/algorithms.
Experience with machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch and TensorFlow.
Demonstrated expertise in deploying models using TensorRT and ONNX.
Proficiency in C++ and Python.
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to translate research into practical applications.
Ability to obtain a SECRET clearance

Preferred

Experience with developing autonomous systems for defense customers.
Experience with training/finetuning vision-language models, vision-language-action models, and/or world models.
Contributions to open-source projects in machine learning or computer vision.
Track record of publications in leading computer vision and robotics conferences and journals (e.g., CVPR, ICCV/ECCV, RAL, ICRA).
Full-time regular employee offer package:
Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity
Temporary employee offer package:
Pay within range listed above + temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)