Senior Communications Systems Engineer (SATCOM)

Location: Full-time onsite in Hawthorne, California, United States; occasional travel to international deployment sites.

Salary: $140,000–$176,000 annual base compensation, excluding bonus, equity, and benefits.

Company

hirify.global develops defense products powered by Coherent Distributed Networks for warfighters, commercial air operators, and border protection teams.

What you will do

• Translate mission, customer, and business needs into traceable, verifiable connectivity requirements.
• Develop architectures, interfaces, design descriptions, and ICDs for 5G, SATCOM, point-to-point wireless, and tactical mesh networks.
• Perform RF link-budget, antenna, handover, line-of-sight, non-line-of-sight, and regulatory analyses.
• Lead communications technology trade studies and evaluate emerging radios, waveforms, multi-orbit SATCOM, and software-defined networking approaches.
• Select, qualify, integrate, and test communications hardware with suppliers, satellite operators, and cross-functional engineering teams.
• Own connectivity matrices, configuration baselines, runbooks, troubleshooting, and reach-back support for field deployments.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical, aerospace, systems, computer engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• 7+ years of systems engineering experience supporting SATCOM, wireless communications, tactical networking, or connectivity products.
• Experience managing and verifying system, subsystem, and interface requirements throughout the product lifecycle.
• Working knowledge of SATCOM, RF communications, satellite link analysis, antenna systems, LTE/5G NR band plans, and satellite internet terminals such as Starlink.
• Strong understanding of IP networking, routing, switching, network protocols, VPNs, failover, and connectivity architectures.
• Experience developing hardware test procedures, pass/fail criteria, RF link budgets, antenna placement analysis, and line-of-sight/NLOS analysis.

Nice to have

• Master’s degree or INCOSE certification.
• Experience with tactical mesh radios, 60 GHz/5 GHz point-to-point systems, and multi-orbit LEO/MEO/GEO constellations.
• Experience designing secure communications architectures involving authentication, encryption, VPNs, certificates, and secure remote connectivity.
• Experience with contested or denied communications environments, requirements-management or MBSE tools, and test automation using Python or Bash.
• Experience with export controls, regional spectrum regulations, international deployments, and an active or eligible U.S. security clearance.

Culture & Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision benefits fully paid by the company.
• 401(k) with a 50% company match up to 6% of pay, plus FSA, HSA, and life insurance.
• Unlimited PTO, free daily lunch, casual dress code, and no-meeting Fridays.
• Relocation assistance and pre-IPO stock option grants; annual bonuses are planned.
• Occasional travel and field support are part of the role.