Job Summary:
9 Mothers Defense develops AI-enabled systems to counter unmanned aerial threats. The company is seeking a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to design, train, and maintain models for their counter-sUAS perception stack, focusing on model research and dataset engineering.
Responsibilities:
โข Design, train, and iterate on machine learning models for detection, classification, and tracking of aerial targets.
โข Own the dataset pipeline end-to-end, including data collection, labeling, curation, augmentation, synthetic data generation, and closed-loop retraining based on field performance.
โข Build and maintain training infrastructure, including experiment tracking, compute orchestration, and evaluation harnesses.
โข Define metrics and evaluation methodologies that correlate to real-world operational performance.
โข Support deployment of trained models into the production perception stack, and address discrepancies between training and deployed performance.
โข Analyze field data to identify and address model failure modes.
Qualifications:
Required:
โข Demonstrated experience shipping machine learning systems into production under real-world operational requirements.
โข Fluency in PyTorch or JAX, including full training loop development beyond fine-tuning off-the-shelf models.
โข Strong software engineering skills beyond model development, including ownership of training infrastructure.
โข Proficiency in Python; working knowledge of C++ or Rust at the training-to-deployment boundary.
โข U.S. citizenship and ability to pass a background check.
Preferred:
โข Experience with detection or tracking of small, fast, or adversarially perturbed targets.
โข Synthetic data generation and sim-to-real methodologies.
โข Experience training models for edge deployment, including quantization-aware training and knowledge distillation.
โข Prior experience in defense or other safety-critical machine learning applications.
โข Active security clearance, or eligibility to obtain one.
โข Passion for building robots or engineering projects as a hobby
Company:
9 Mothers is a defense tech company that offers an AI-powered C-sUAS point defense turret designed to engage multiple fast-moving drones. Founded in 2024, the company is headquartered in Austin, USA, with a team of 11-50 employees. The company is currently Early Stage.