Senior Machine Learning Engineer

About the company

Seasats designs and manufactures small, long-endurance uncrewed surface vehicles (sUSVs) for defense, commercial, and scientific maritime missions.

About this role

Role: Senior Machine Learning Engineer Location: San Diego, CA (in-office) Salary Range: $180,000 - $250,000 / yr + stock options, 401k matching, and other benefits Role Overview: Seasats' vehicles operate in highly remote and often communications-limited environments. To complete persistent missions at scale, the vehicles must be able to perceive and reason about the world around them without humans in the loop. Seasats has built a reliable and increasingly intelligent autonomy stack incorporating onboard sensors and processing, and machine learning is becoming central to how it evolves. In this role, you'll own the development, training, and edge deployment of the perception models at the heart of that stack. You'll take models from experiment to production: curating fleet data, training and distilling models, optimizing them for embedded hardware, and validating them against real-world maritime conditions. Your work will directly determine how safely and intelligently our vessels navigate dynamic ocean environments. Role Details: As a senior member of the team, you'll help set the technical direction for onboard ML at Seasats and raise the bar for how models are built, evaluated, and shipped across the company. You'll work independently on experiments while collaborating closely with the vehicle software team to integrate your work into the larger stack. On a day-by-day basis, you will: Help define and drive the ML roadmap for vehicle perception Scope and run ML experiments with clearly measurable end states that would positively impact vehicle performance if successful Train, fine-tune, and optimize models sized for compute-limited edge hardware, and validate real-time performance on target hardware Build and maintain the data pipeline: analyzing, organizing, and labeling datasets from our fleet to drive data-driven development Establish evaluation frameworks and metrics that give the team confidence in model behavior before it goes to sea This is an excellent opportunity to do high impact work, see your models running live on vehicles at sea, and join a fun and hard-working team on the cutting edge of ocean autonomy. About You: 7+ years in machine learning, including 5+ years solving perception problems in production systems Deep computer vision background, including foundation models and training smaller custom models Track record of shipping performant ML models to edge devices and hands-on experience with model optimization for the edge (quantization, pruning, and inference runtimes such as TensorRT or ONNX Runtime) Strong proficiency in Python, with expert-level fluency in PyTorch and strong working knowledge of OpenCV Experience with MLOps tooling for dataset versioning, experiment tracking, and model deployment Experience working with real-time sensor data (e.g., camera, radar, and IMU streams) and familiarity with classical perception techniques (e.g., filtering, tracking, sensor fusion Demonstrated ability to scope projects independently, lead technical efforts, and mentor other engineers Strong technical communication skills A bias toward getting multiple projects to 80% rather than one project to "perfect", while taking great joy in seeing projects approach perfection over time In addition, it's nice (though not essential) if you have experience working with: Probabilistic algorithms for obstacle and target tracking, and change detection algorithms for a variety of data types Real-time multi-modal sensor fusion across LiDAR, radar, camera, and IMU data Maritime and/or acoustic data Path-planning and control algorithms About Seasats: At Seasats, we're passionate about delivering maritime robotics solutions to redefine the maritime industry. Our primary products are unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), designed to carry sensors at sea for months at a time. Our USVs provide persistent monitoring and data acquisition to defense, scientific, and commercial customers, and have autonomously crossed both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. After thousands of years in which the only way to gather information from the ocean was to put people on a boat, these uncrewed vessels are transforming how humanity monitors and interacts with the ocean. Here, you'll find the space and opportunity to do your life's best work. Along with your salary, you'll receive perks including: Stock options Competitive insurance (including a 99% employer-covered Gold HMO plan or other options) 401k matching up to 4% of salary Four free lunches per week An employee activity fund A pet-friendly office Unlimited/Flex PTO Hiring Notes: When applying, you'll be asked to provide a resume and answer a few screening questions. Due to export control requirements applicable to this position, we are only able to consider U.S. persons, as defined by U.S. export control laws. This includes U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and individuals granted asylee or refugee status. We appreciate diverse perspectives and life experiences, and we're committed to building a team that reflects a wide range of backgrounds. Seasats provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination of any type based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under federal, state, or local law. We look forward to reviewing your application!