Staff Radar Engineer, Mars Orbiter (Radar)

Location: Hybrid role in Long Beach, California, United States

Salary: $175,000–$263,000 USD annually

Company

hirify.global develops launch vehicles, spacecraft-related systems, and technologies for commercial spaceflight and interplanetary science missions.

What you will do

• Own the vehicle-level system design of radar electronics, signal-processing chains, and antenna systems for sounder and radiometer modes.
• Develop instrument performance, power and mass budgets, link budgets, and SNR and penetration-depth analyses.
• Lead waveform trade studies with science partners and implement waveforms and baseline processing algorithms.
• Lead prototype and brass-board hardware development, validation, calibration, qualification, and acceptance testing.
• Coordinate RF, digital, power, mechanical, firmware, and software development across disciplines.
• Integrate the instrument into the spacecraft, support terrestrial analog flight testing, spectrum coordination, and on-orbit commissioning.

Requirements

• 7+ years of electrical hardware development experience with software-defined radios, radar transceivers, or sophisticated digital processors.
• Experience developing radar system performance budgets and modeling radar returns and performance.
• Experience implementing radio or radar transceivers as software-defined radios.
• Field-testing, flight-testing, or spaceflight experience with radio or radar transceivers.
• Deep expertise in at least one area: FPGA or GPU signal-processing chains, mixed-signal and digital PCB design, RF circuit design, or antenna design and verification.
• Ability to work in a hybrid setup in Long Beach, California, United States.

Nice to have

• Experience with microwave radiometry, radiometer instruments, planetary radars, or terrestrial radars.
• Familiarity with AMD/Xilinx RFSoC or Zynq UltraScale+ platforms.
• Experience with spectrum licensing, frequency coordination, polarimetric radar, or full-polarimetry calibration.
• Experience taking RF payloads through PDR/CDR, qualification, and spacecraft integration.

Culture & Benefits

• Autonomy, ownership, and cross-functional collaboration are emphasized.
• Competitive salary and equity.
• Generous paid time off and sick leave.
• Parental leave and an annual learning and development stipend.
• Equal opportunity employment and reasonable accommodation support.