Senior Software Engineer (Perception)

The Hivemind Solutions Perception team develops the next generation of perception capabilities for autonomous systems by combining state-of-the-art machine learning with the proven foundations of computer visionThe team advances how autonomous platforms understand and interpret the world by developing vision, vision-language (VLM), and vision-language-action (VLA) models that tackle core perception challenges such as object understanding, scene interpretation, and mission-relevant environmental awarenessWorking at the intersection of research and production, our engineers build the data pipelines, supervised fine-tuning (SFT) workflows, evaluation frameworks, and deployment infrastructure needed to transform cutting-edge AI research into reliable, mission-ready perception capabilitiesIn this role, you’ll develop and deploy advanced machine learning models that solve real-world perception challenges for autonomous systemsYou’ll own major features from model development through deployment, working closely with machine learning researchers, perception engineers, autonomy engineers, and platform teams to bring cutting-edge AI capabilities into productionThis is an ideal opportunity for engineers who enjoy solving difficult perception problems while building reliable, production-ready ML systems that operate on autonomous platforms in complex operational environmentsModel 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 systemsData Pipelines & Model Training – Build scalable data pipelines, supervised fine-tuning (SFT) workflows, and evaluation loops that continuously improve model performance on mission-relevant tasksModel Deployment & Optimization – Deploy and optimize machine learning models for embedded hardware using technologies such as ONNX, TensorRT, and hardware-accelerated inference frameworksPerception & 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 environmentsResearch-to-Production – Translate cutting-edge machine learning research into production-ready capabilities by balancing model performance, robustness, computational efficiency, and operational reliabilityCross-functional Collaboration – Partner closely with perception, autonomy, platform, and software engineering teams to integrate machine learning capabilities into mission-ready autonomous systemsModel Evaluation & Validation – Develop benchmarks, testing methodologies, and evaluation frameworks to measure model performance, identify failure modes, and guide future improvementsContinuous Improvement – Improve training infrastructure, developer tooling, deployment workflows, and model lifecycle management to accelerate experimentation and production deliveryBenefitsExcellent Medical CoverageMental Health Employee Assistance ProgramPaid Parental LeavePet InsuranceFlexible Work HoursOnsite Gym (DC) Gym Discount (San Diego) Free ParkingCompetitive CompensationStock Benefits 401K Services and MatchExperience training an deploying ML models for computer vision in a production settingPrioficiency of machine learning fundamentalsExperience with machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch and TensorFlowDemonstrated expertise in deploying models using TensorRT and ONNXProficiency in C++ and PythonStrong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to translate research into practical applicationsStrong understanding of 3D vision problems/algorithmsTypically requires a minimum of 5 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 4 years and a Master’s degree; or 2 years with a PhD; or equivalent work experienceAbility to obtain a SECRET clearanceExperience with developing autonomous systems for defense customersExperience with training/finetuning vision-language models, vision-language-action models, and/or world modelsContributions to open-source projects in machine learning or computer visionTrack record of publications in leading computer vision and robotics conferences and journals (e.g., CVPR, ICCV/ECCV, RAL, ICRA)