Staff Engineer, AI (Herndon)

Staff AI EngineerAbout Us:BlackSky is a real-time intelligence company. We own and operate the world's most advanced space-based intelligence platform and provide customers satellite imagery, automated analytics and high-frequency monitoring of strategic locations, economic assets and events from around the globe. BlackSky is trusted by the most demanding allied military and intelligence organizations and commercial companies to deliver foresight into critical matters that affect national security and the economy. BlackSky's data enables governments and businesses to see, understand and anticipate change as it happens, giving them the ultimate strategic advantage so they can act quickly. Our global team works with cutting-edge technology to make a difference around the world and prides itself on being people-first, customer-focused and fun.BlackSky is seeking a Staff AI Engineer to lead the architecture, development, and delivery of mission-critical AI solutions within customer environments. This is a hands-on role and an opportunity to develop and shape an exciting new growth area. The ideal candidate for this role blends deep technical ownership (roadmap, R&D, AI/ML systems) with customer-facing solution delivery (scoping, prototype-to-production, and executive communication). This senior individual contributor role will partner with CV, MLOps, Data QA, Solutions, and BD teams to ensure BlackSky delivers reliable and actionable insights. The role will be full-time based out of Herndon, VA working in our SCIF with occasional customer site commitments and will report to the Senior Manager of AI.Responsibilities:Partner with CV and MLOps to design and extend components needed to ensure models are trained, versioned, deployed, monitored, and maintained reliably in customer environments.Collaborate with the Data QA team to define annotation standards, resolve taxonomy issues, and identify data-quality improvements based on model failure modes.Independently prototype, evaluate, and deploy AI capabilities in a secure development environment.Communicate technical strategy, progress, risks, and opportunities clearly to leadership, cross-functional partners, and other stakeholders.Contribute to proposals, white papers, and long-term strategy, shaping future mission-aligned geospatial AI investments.Own and architect the mission-aligned roadmap for geospatial CV and applied AI, partnering with customers to translate mission requirements into technical designs and implementing core components.Other job-related duties as assigned.Required Qualifications:Minimum of 10 years of hands-on software engineering experience, including at least 4+ years developing and deploying applied AI/ML systems and pipelines.Bachelor’s degree in CS/EE/math/statistics or a related quantitative field.Strong proficiency in Python and modern ML/CV libraries such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.Experience researching, building, and evaluating production-ready CV models for detection, segmentation, change detection, or related tasks.Experience working with remote sensing imagery including geometry, radiometric normalization, augmentation, and sensor-specific challenges.Hands-on experience with geospatial tools such as GDAL, Rasterio, GeoPandas, Shapely, xarray, or Zarr.Experience with modern ML infrastructure, including cloud services (e.g., AWS), containerization and orchestration platforms (e.g., Kubernetes), and the ability to adapt these systems to customer-specific or offline environments such as secure enclaves, on-prem systems, or air-gapped deployments.Strong ability to communicate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences including leadership and technical teams.Must have an active US Top Secret clearance with an SCI.Preferred Qualifications:M.S. or Ph.D. in CS/EE/math/statistics or a related quantitative field.At least 2 years of experience designing, building, and operating AI/ML systems in secure, on-prem and/or air-gapped systems.Experience working in DoD, IC, or Fed/Civ environments.Experience designing and executing large-scale CV experiments, including dataset construction, synthetic/augmented data generation, and evaluation protocols tailored to mission needs.Familiarity with remote sensing data sources including BlackSky, Airbus, Planet, and Vantor.Demonstrated experience designing CV/ML systems and pipelines that meet or exceed benchmarks and are optimized for production constraints such as latency and efficiency.Exposure to foundation models, VLMs, and other multimodal approaches for geospatial imagery.Life at BlackSky for full-time US benefits eligible employees includes:Medical, dental, vision, disability, group term life and AD&D, voluntary life and AD&D insuranceBlackSky pays 100% of employee-only premiums for medical, dental and vision and contributes $100/month for out-of-pocket expenses!15 days of PTO, 11 Company holidays, four Floating Holidays (pro-rated based on hire date), one day of paid volunteerism leave per year, parental leave and more401(k) pre-tax and Roth deferral options with employer matchFlexible Spending AccountsEmployee Stock Purchase ProgramEmployee Assistance and Travel Assistance ProgramsEmployer matching donationsProfessional developmentMac or PC? Your choice!Awesome swagBlackSky is committed to hiring and retaining a diverse workforce. We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer All Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. EEO/AAP/ Pay Transparency Statements: