Senior RF Systems Engineer (Aerospace)

Location: On-site at the Denver, Colorado headquarters; must be located near Denver or willing to relocate. Travel is expected for field campaigns, test flights, and customer integration.

Company

Urban Sky is a venture-backed aerospace startup designing, building, operating, and selling stratospheric balloon systems for wildfire monitoring, urban mapping, and government applications.

What you will do

• Own RF systems across flight vehicles, avionics, devices, and ground stations, including SATCOM, command links, GNSS, and software-defined radios.
• Review board-level RF design, filtering, shielding, antenna selection and placement, desense, and co-site interference.
• Develop link budgets and validate RF performance through hardware-in-the-loop and field testing.
• Architect ground stations, relay and bent-pipe topologies, MIMO architectures, mesh backhaul, and routing solutions.
• Harden RF systems against jamming and GPS denial while developing secure, encrypted networking standards.
• Lead third-party payload integration, RF interference deconfliction, spectrum planning, frequency coordination, and regulatory compliance.

Requirements

• B.S. or M.S. in Electrical Engineering, Communications Engineering, or a related field.
• 7+ years of hands-on RF systems engineering experience across hardware and system levels, preferably in aerospace, satellite, tactical communications, or high-altitude platforms.
• Deep knowledge of RF propagation, link budgets, modulation and coding, and antenna design.
• Board-level RF troubleshooting experience using spectrum analyzers and schematics, plus hands-on experience with VNAs, signal generators, and antenna measurements.
• Experience with software-defined radios, mesh or relay network architectures, secure communications, encryption, key management, and scripting for link modeling or test automation.
• Must be a US citizen or permanent resident; the ability to obtain and maintain a US security clearance may be required for certain programs.

Nice to have

• Experience with HABS, smallsat communications, airborne relay architectures, contested environments, or electronic warfare.
• Experience with ISM, L-band, or S-band systems, adaptive modulation and coding, RF payloads, antenna simulation tools, or an active US security clearance.

Culture & Benefits

• Small, supportive team culture based on candor, inclusion, respect, and empowerment.
• Medical, vision, and dental coverage.
• Stock options.
• Unlimited and flexible leave policy.
• Cell phone bill stipend.