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Space Tango is an innovative space technology small business based in Lexington, Ky. Space Tango's mission is to manufacture health and technology products in space that create value and transformational solutions. Space Tango provides space-based automated facilities and payloads to support research and development and small-scale manufacturing needs of our partners and customers in the Low Earth Orbit environment and beyond. As a leader in automated systems, Space Tango pursues pathways to on-orbit production. Our vision is to inspire, innovate, and create a better future for humanity by utilizing the environment of space.

The Image Data Scientist position serves as the company’s technical lead and subject matter expert for imaging systems used within its spaceflight payloads and facilities. This role develops, integrates, tests, and maintains software supporting Space Tango's spaceflight payloads, while leading the continual advancement of imaging hardware, software, and analysis capabilities. Working across software, electrical, mechanical, science, and operations teams, the Image Data Scientist supports both new mission development and existing flight systems, developing image acquisition, processing, path optimization, and post-processing solutions that enable autonomous operations and scientific investigations in microgravity.

Travel may be required to support launches, customer activities, partner integrations, and mission operations. Because Space Tango's business centers around spaceflight missions, candidates should be comfortable supporting non-standard work schedules, including occasional evenings, weekends, holidays, and other non-nominal hours when required for launch campaigns, testing, or on-orbit operations.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, integrate, test, maintain, and enhance software supporting Space Tango payloads and facilities, including image acquisition, processing, visualization, and analysis capabilities.
• Develop new software features while maintaining and improving existing software platforms used across multiple spaceflight missions.
• Develop and enhance automated image-analysis and post-processing pipelines that generate reliable, reproducible scientific results.
• Collaborate with external customers and internal scientists to translate scientific objectives into automated imaging and analysis workflows.
• Optimize image-processing algorithms for biological experiments conducted in microgravity.
• Develop computer vision techniques for feature detection, segmentation, tracking, quantification, and quality assessment.
• Support real-time and post-flight image processing for customer investigations.
• Support software integration, verification, testing, troubleshooting, and flight operations throughout the project lifecycle.
• Collaborate with science, software, mechanical, electrical, and mission operations teams to ensure imaging systems meet scientific objectives.
• Develop validation methods and quality metrics for imaging pipelines.
• Support payload integration, testing, flight operations, and customer data reviews.
• Evaluate emerging imaging technologies, AI methods, computer vision, and image-analysis techniques applicable to future missions.
• Serve as the company’s technical owner for bioimaging software, analysis methods, and imaging workflows by establishing best practices and driving continual improvement across the organization.

Qualifications, Skills, and Experience

Required:

• BS or MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Bioinformatics, Physics, Applied Mathematics, or related discipline
• 5+ years developing scientific software or image-analysis applications
• Strong Python experience
• Experience developing scientific software, image-analysis applications, or data-processing pipelines.
• Experience with scientific imaging, computer vision, microscopy, or related image-processing applications.
• ImageJ, Cellpose, StarDist, SAM, PyTorch, Bio-Formats
• Willingness to support non-nominal hours, including evenings, weekends, and holidays, as required for launches, testing, and mission operations.

Preferred:

• Experience with spaceflight payloads, aerospace systems, robotics, lab automation, or embedded systems.
• Deep learning for image segmentation/classification
• Experience with Git and familiarity with Python development workflows, Docker, or CI/CD workflows.
• Experience supporting biological or biomedical research.
• Experience collaborating with multidisciplinary engineering and scientific teams.
• Familiarity with NASA mission operations, quality systems, or regulated technical environments.

Interpersonal Skills

• Strong attention to detail.
• Calm, disciplined execution during time-sensitive operations.
• Ability to collaborate across software, hardware, science, operations, and project management teams.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities while maintaining high attention to detail.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Willingness to learn new systems, tools, and procedures quickly.
• Commitment to team success and mission reliability.

Space Tango is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Space Tango is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.

This position may require access to technology and information subject to U.S. export control laws, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). Employment is contingent upon the ability to obtain any necessary government authorizations to access and handle controlled technology and data. Candidates must be able to comply with all applicable export control regulations.