RF Engineer (Optical Communications)

Location: On-site in San Carlos, California, United States

Salary: $150,000–$200,000 annually

Company

Building satellite infrastructure for the orbital economy, including space-based energy transmission, on-orbit computing, and secure high-bandwidth optical data communications.

What you will do

• Design, develop, and integrate communication PCBAs, modulators, and devices for airborne and space-based platforms.
• Architect and implement software-defined radio communication pipelines covering modulation, encoding, synchronization, and signal processing.
• Develop high-speed free-space optical and laser communication links, including link budgets, pointing and tracking, alignment, failover, and redundancy.
• Design and validate end-to-end communication chains from data streams through communication PCBAs to optical front ends.
• Build lab and field test infrastructure for over-the-air and optical link validation.
• Analyze noise, interference, Doppler, atmospheric turbulence, pointing loss, thermal variation, and power constraints while maintaining system documentation and performance metrics.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Physics, or a related field.
• 3+ years of experience in RF systems, communications engineering, or a related field.
• Strong knowledge of communication theory, including modulation, coding, synchronization, and signal propagation.
• Experience designing communication PCBAs, working with software-defined radio platforms, and integrating hardware and software.
• Hands-on experience with spectrum analyzers, signal generators, VNAs, and oscilloscopes, plus familiarity with link budgeting and system-level analysis.
• Must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, protected individual, or eligible to obtain the authorizations required under ITAR regulations.

Nice to have

• Experience with high-speed optical communications, free-space optics, laser communications, coherent optical links, or photonics.
• Background in avionics, aerospace, mission-critical embedded systems, or SWaP-constrained flight systems.
• Experience with real-time DSP on embedded systems, FPGAs, or GPUs and familiarity with SDR frameworks, USRPs, or custom RF front ends.
• Knowledge of atmospheric RF and optical propagation effects, pointing-acquisition-tracking systems, antenna systems, phased arrays, or optical beam steering.
• Experience with high-throughput, low-latency communication architectures and full-stack debugging across RF, optical, firmware, and software systems.

Culture & Benefits

• Equity in hirify.global Corp.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and eligible dependents.
• 401(k) retirement savings plan, paid time off, 10 paid holidays, and paid parental leave.
• Relocation assistance may be available.
• Daily lunch in the office and a stocked kitchen with beverages and snacks.