Optical RF Engineer — High‑Throughput Space Links

Cowboy Space Corporation; San Carlos (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Medical insurance

401(k)

Paid time off

Relocation assistance

Office lunch

Job summary

Cowboy Space Corp. in California is seeking an RF Engineer to design and deploy advanced communication systems with a focus on high-speed optical links and SDR architectures.

This role sits at the boundary of networking, RF avionics, and embedded compute. You will own RF and hybrid RF/optical subsystems delivering high-throughput data links under motion, atmospheric interference, and limited power budgets, and work with avionics, firmware, and compute teams to integrate them into flight

Qualifications

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

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 and pointing/tracking strategies
• Perform system-level trade studies from high-speed optical links
• Design and validate end-to-end communication chains from data streams to optical front-ends
• Collaborate with avionics, firmware, and compute teams to integrate comms 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

Skills

RF engineering

Communication theory

SDR platforms

RF testing

Education

Bachelor’s in EE/Physics

Tools

Spectrum analyzers

Signal generators

VNAs

Oscilloscopes

Job description

Cowboy Space Corp. in California is seeking an RF Engineer to design and deploy advanced communication systems with a focus on high-speed optical links and SDR architectures.

This role sits at the boundary of networking, RF avionics, and embedded compute. You will own RF and hybrid RF/optical subsystems delivering high-throughput data links under motion, atmospheric interference, and limited power budgets, and work with avionics, firmware, and compute teams to integrate them into flight