Engineering Intern - Crucible Synthetic NEI (Summer 2027)
About The Position
Millennial Software, part of Expedition Technology, is seeking two Engineering Interns for its Summer 2027 program to work on Crucible, an agentic modeling and simulation platform. The project addresses the scarcity and classification of real non-Earth imagery by building a synthetic imagery generator. The generator will render spacecraft from publicly available 3D models under varied pose, lighting, range, and sensor conditions, and produce per-component segmentation masks for every frame. It is the primary deliverable and is expected to be complete by week six. The stretch goal is to fine-tune a segmentation model on the synthetic dataset in Keystone and map predicted spacecraft components into a populated Target Model Database (TMDB) record. All work is unclassified and uses publicly available models. Interns will work with assigned mentors, participate in daily standups, and present a recorded demonstration and readout to leadership. The program runs May 17–August 6, 2027, at the company’s Chantilly, Virginia headquarters, with remote flexibility noted in the program details.
Requirements
- Be a U.S. citizen able to obtain and maintain a DoD security clearance.
- Be a rising senior, or an exceptional rising junior, pursuing a BS in Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, or a related field, and meet the GPA requirement.
- Have strong Python skills and comfort with Git and Linux development environments.
- Have coursework or project experience in at least one of computer graphics or 3D rendering, computer vision, or machine learning (PyTorch or similar).
- Be available full time, on site in Chantilly, Virginia, for the 12-week program.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with rendering tools or engines such as Blender, Unity, Unreal, Three.js, or PyRender, or mesh formats such as glTF, OBJ, or STL.
- Image segmentation or object detection experience, such as U-Net, Mask R-CNN, or SAM.
- Orbital mechanics or spacecraft systems coursework.
- GPU training experience or familiarity with experiment tracking.
Responsibilities
- Build a rendering module in Crucible using open 3D spacecraft models and a parametric scene generator covering orbit geometry, target pose, illumination and self-shadowing, sensor range and resolution, noise, and blur.
- Generate per-component segmentation masks for every rendered frame and record rendering parameters so images can be regenerated.
- Produce a labeled dataset of several thousand frames across multiple targets and demonstrate generating a dataset for a new target in under one working day.
- As a stretch goal, fine-tune a segmentation model based on a published architecture and run training and evaluation in Keystone against a held-out synthetic set.
- As a stretch goal, post-process predicted components into TMDB schema fields and populate one record end to end.
- Document the pipeline and present a recorded demonstration and readout to leadership.
Stand Out From the Crowd
Upload your resume and get instant feedback on how well it matches this job.
What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Intern
