Lead Computer Vision Scientist

Norfolk Southern offers a unique opportunity to be part of our proud legacy that spans nearly 200 years. We are a customer-centric, operations-driven team dedicated to advancing safety, serving communities, and driving innovation for tomorrow's rail.  As part of Norfolk Southern, you’ll join a collaborative team where there are opportunities for growth across the organization. We are building a culture where everyone can thrive by owning and driving exceptional results, being humble and leading with trust, serving our customers with excellence, and collaborating and coaching to win.

Job Description

Norfolk Southern is a unique experience, where heritage, stability, and innovation live together. We are one of the largest railroad operators in the country and that provides premium shipping service and reliable logistics solutions for customers in 22 states including the District of Columbia.  In combination with business partnerships and connections with other carriers, NS ships every product imaginable to and from any destination, linking communities and customers to the marketplaces of the world.

Who we are and what we do:

The Artificial Intelligence and Data Science team is centralized across the entire organization. This team works with various product teams across various business units to define high-impact business problems, solve them using novel techniques, and execute and monitor them throughout their lifecycle. Most of our models make it to production, they never sit in a research lab. As a team, we do quite a bit of research to stay up-to-date with the latest technologies and algorithms. This team is high performance, collaborative, and idea generating. 

What kind of problems do we solve:

Norfolk Southern’s problem set is unique and our high-frame cameras beside our tracks, captures images of trains and rail cars as they pass. We design various Deep Learning and Computer Vision algorithms to detect certain objects of interest or issues and defects. We optimize performance and deploy at the edge for real-time scoring and notify our mechanical personnel upon detections. Our locomotives stream 350+ sensor information in real-time. We create predictive models to predict various component failures hours, days, and sometimes months in advance.

What tools do we use:

Jupyter notebook, Emacs, PyCharm, RStudio as IDEs.
Tensorflow, Keras, PyTorch, MxNet, OpenCV
 

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and implement novel computer vision algorithms for unique use cases.
• Design and build novel custom CNN architectures.
• Evaluate accuracy and quality of the designed models as well as data sources.
• Stay up to date with the latest models and changes in the technology.
• Design and develop production ready code.
• Communicate results and implications to colleagues and business partners.
• Coordinate with application development teams to integrate developed models with existing applications.
• Manage the complete model development life-cycle – from requirements gathering to post production support.
• Communicate results to colleagues, business partners, and senior management.
• Provide guidance to junior team members and oversee targeted research and team projects
• Lead hiring efforts and candidate evaluation.

Skills Required:

• Bachelors in computer science, electrical engineering, machine learning, statistics, or related field.
• 1-3 years of experience as a Computer Scientist, Data Scientist, Research Scientist, Machine Learning Scientist developing deep learning models. 
• Experience with Python.
• Experience with TensorFlow, Keras and/or PyTorch.
• Experience with image processing using Deep Learning (semantic segmentation, object detection, classification) 
• Experience with various cameras like area scan and line scan. 
• Familiarity with CNN architectures (VGG16, ResNet, MobileNet, YOLO) 
• Experience with traditional image processing techniques such as OpenCV, skimage. 

Skills Preferred: 

• Masters or Ph. D in computer science, electrical engineering, machine learning, statistics or related field. 
• 3-5+ years of experience as a Computer Scientist, Data Scientist, Research Scientist, Machine Learning Scientist.
• Expert experience scripting and programing with Python. 
• Experience with deployment to the edge devices such as jetson nano. 
• AWS Cloud 
• Familiarity with the railroad industry is highly preferred.

Work Conditions
Environment: Office remote, ideal candidate must be based or relocated within 60 miles Atlanta.
Shift Work: No
On-Call: Yes
Weekend Work: No
 
 

Company Overview

Since 1827, Norfolk Southern Corporation (NYSE: NSC) and its predecessor companies have safely moved the goods and materials that drive the U.S. economy. Today, it operates a customer-centric and operations-driven freight transportation network. Committed to furthering sustainability, Norfolk Southern helps its customers avoid 15 million tons of yearly carbon emissions by shipping via rail. Its dedicated team members deliver more than 7 million carloads annually, from agriculture to consumer goods, and is the largest rail shipper of auto products and metals in North America. Norfolk Southern also has the most extensive intermodal network in the eastern U.S., serving a majority of the country’s population and manufacturing base, with connections to every major container port on the Atlantic coast as well as the Gulf of Mexico and Great Lakes. Learn more by visiting www.NorfolkSouthern.com.

At Norfolk Southern, we believe in celebrating our individuality. By leveraging the unique backgrounds and viewpoints of our employees, we can create a culture of innovation, respect, and inclusion. We know that employees thrive in a workplace where differing viewpoints, ideas, and experiences are freely shared and valued. As such, we encourage all employees to contribute their distinctive skills and capabilities to our organization.

Equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants regardless of race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetic information, veteran status, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Together, we power progress.