Optical RF Communications Engineer — Space Links

Socket.dev; San Carlos (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Medical, dental, vision insurance

401(k)

Job summary

Cowboy Space Corp. in San Carlos, CA is seeking an RF Engineer to design and deploy advanced communication systems with a focus on high-speed optical communications and SDR architectures. You will bridge networking, RF avionics, and embedded compute to build robust flight-ready pipelines.

Responsibilities include PCBA design, SDR pipeline implementation, optical link development, and end-to-end system validation, with cross-disciplinary collaboration across avionics, firmware, and compute teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Physics, or related field.
• 3+ years of experience in RF systems, communications engineering, or related domain.
• Strong fundamentals in communication theory (modulation, coding, synchronization, signal propagation).
• Experience in designing PCBA’s for communication systems.
• Experience with software-defined radio platforms.
• Hands-on experience with RF lab equipment (spectrum analyzers, signal generators, VNAs, oscilloscopes).
• Familiarity with link budgeting and system-level performance analysis.
• Experience working across hardware and software boundaries.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and integrate communication PCBAs, modulators, and devices for airborne or space-based platforms.
• Architect and implement SDR-based communication pipelines (modulation, encoding, synchronization, and signal processing).
• Develop high-speed optical communication links (free-space optics / laser comms), including link budgeting, pointing and tracking, and alignment strategies with intelligent failover and redundancy.
• Perform system-level trade studies from high-speed optical links.
• Design and validate end-to-end communication chains, from data streams, through communication PCBAs, and to optical front-ends.
• Collaborate closely with avionics, firmware, and compute teams to integrate comms systems into flight hardware.
• Develop test infrastructure for lab and field validation, including over-the-air testing and optical link validation setups.
• Analyze performance under real-world conditions (noise, interference, Doppler, atmospheric turbulence, pointing loss) and iterate rapidly.
• Own documentation, interface definitions, and system performance metrics for communication subsystems.

Skills

RF systems

Communication theory

Software-defined radio

Lab testing

Education

Bachelor's in EE

Tools

Spectrum analyzers

Signal generators

VNAs

Oscilloscopes

SDR platforms

Job description

Cowboy Space Corp. in San Carlos, CA is seeking an RF Engineer to design and deploy advanced communication systems with a focus on high-speed optical communications and SDR architectures. You will bridge networking, RF avionics, and embedded compute to build robust flight-ready pipelines.

Responsibilities include PCBA design, SDR pipeline implementation, optical link development, and end-to-end system validation, with cross-disciplinary collaboration across avionics, firmware, and compute teams.