Senior AI and Computer Vision Engineer (Spacecraft Pose Estimation & Autonomous Systems)

The Exploration Company • Germany

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AI Summary

Build and deploy deep-learning models for 6-DoF pose estimation of non-cooperative spacecraft using synthetic/lab data, optimizing for embedded and neuromorphic hardware. Own the full pipeline—from dataset generation to model deployment—while ensuring robustness, explainability, and certification-readiness in a fast-paced aerospace R&D environment.

Key Highlights

Develop and optimize deep-learning models for autonomous spacecraft pose estimation in constrained flight hardware.

End-to-end ownership of training pipelines, including synthetic-to-real domain adaptation and hardware deployment.

Collaborate with GNC/FPO teams to define validation criteria and hardware-in-the-loop testing for space-qualified systems.

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Key Responsibilities

Design, train, and evaluate deep-learning models for 6-DoF pose estimation of non-cooperative spacecraft.

Manage synthetic/lab-to-real domain adaptation, augmentation, and experiment reproducibility pipelines.

Optimize models for flight hardware (quantization, distillation, pruning) and benchmark latency/memory/energy trade-offs.

Port and evaluate models on embedded/neuromorphic hardware, ensuring accuracy-energy balance.

Integrate explainability and uncertainty quantification for certification and failure-mode debugging.

Prototype self-supervised refinement methods for in-flight model adaptation on unlabeled imagery.

Define validation requirements, test scenarios, and hardware-in-the-loop testbed campaigns.

Collaborate with GNC/FPO teams to select and characterize space-qualified camera sensors.

Efficiently manage distributed training compute across cloud GPU and internal HPC resources.

Technical Skills Required

Python Deep Learning Frameworks (PyTorch) Computer Vision (3D Geometry, Camera Calibration)

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Benefits & Perks

Relocation assistance provided

Visa sponsorship where applicable

Equal opportunity employer with diversity focus

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Nice to Have

Experience with spacecraft rendezvous/docking or vision-based navigation

Familiarity with neuromorphic hardware (spiking neural networks, event-based cameras)

Knowledge of federated learning, differential privacy, or secure aggregation

Rendering/synthetic data generation (Blender, Unreal Engine, Isaac Sim)

Space or safety-critical software assurance experience

Job Description

Here at The Exploration Company, we are building innovative aerospace technologies that advance the future of space transportation.We want you as a hands-on AI and Computer Vision Engineer to build the perception capability behind autonomous close-proximity operations: models that estimate the relative position and orientation of non-cooperative spacecraft from camera images, trained largely on synthetic and lab data, and optimized to run on the compute we can actually fly.This is a builder role. You write the training code, run the experiments, take the models onto embedded and neuromorphic hardware, and own the results.

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