Computer Vision Engineer III, Senior; Rendering and Simulation

Position: Computer Vision Engineer III, Senior (Rendering and Simulation)
Description:

About Lockheed Martin Space:

Space is a critical domain, connecting our technologies, our security, and our humanity. While others view space as a destination, we see it as a realm of possibilities, where we can do more - we can innovate, invest, inspire, and integrate our capabilities to transform the future.

At Lockheed Martin Space, we aim to harness the full potential of space to cultivate innovation, reduce costs, and push the boundaries of what technology can achieve. We're creating future-ready solutions, focusing on resiliency and urgency through our 21st Century Security vision. We're erasing boundaries and forming partnerships across industries and around the world. We're advancing spacecraft and the workforce to fuel the next generation.

And we're reimagining how space can connect us, ensuring security and prosperity.

Join us in shaping a new era in space and find a career that's built for you

About the Team:

You'll collaborate with some of the brightest minds in engineering to design and integrate pioneering capabilities that shape the future of our mission. Our high‑impact, cross‑functional team delivers cutting‑edge perception solutions for a variety of mission‑critical platforms. We specialize in classical computer‑vision algorithms like feature detection, stereo matching, optical flow while also integrating modern AI techniques such as semantic segmentation and learned feature representations.

Every solution is engineered with the strict hardware constraints of resource‑limited processors in mind, including the ultra‑low‑power, radiation‑hardened CPUs typical of space‑borne systems.

About the Role:

We are looking for a motivated engineer to join our team and take ownership of our in‑house rendering engine which is the core tool that generates synthetic, radio metrically accurate scenes for testing and validating our computer vision solutions. In this role you will extend and enhance the engine to meet the demanding performance, fidelity, and hardware‑constraint requirements of space‑borne platforms. The ideal candidate will:

* Quickly get up to speed with the current codebase, architecture, and data pipelines, identifying improvement opportunities and documenting key components.

* Accelerate rendering with GPU compute. Design and implement CUDA-based kernels to achieve real-time or faster than real time performance for ray-traced scene generation.

* Implement high fidelity camera models. Collaborate with optical engineers to translate sensor characteristics into accurate simulation environments.

* Work with and update the C++ API. The API exposes the engine's core functionality. This needs to be maintained, updated, and documented for the use of downstream simulation pipelines.

* Integrate and validate. Work hand‑in‑hand with algorithm developers to embed the rendering engine into their testing workflows, ensuring generated data meets the strict accuracy and performance requirements of space‑borne platforms.

* Define test cases, compare simulation results against analytical/ground‑truth data, document V&V evidence, and support formal review packages

* Debug computer vision algorithm performance in the simulation by debugging the underlying code and using visualizations to diagnose issues

* Collaborate with embedded‑hardware, optics, and systems teams to ensure the simulation reflects actual hardware behavior and integrates smoothly with downstream tool chains

Generally has 3+ years of related experience and may have a post-secondary degree or training in a related discipline.

Basic Qualifications:

Skill Requirements:

* Proficiency in modern C++ (C++14/17/20)

* Demonstrated ability to develop CUDA kernels. Hands‑on experience writing and debugging CUDA (or equivalent) kernels

* Experience with implementing computer graphics algorithms

* Familiarity with of GPU architectures, GPU memory hierarchies, and trade-offs between compute and memory bandwidth

* Experience with GPU performance-profiling tools like NVIDIA Nsight, visual profiler, or something similar

* Experience with github or gitlab

Security Clearance / Work Authorization:

* To meet requirements of the program/customer, this…