Senior RF Systems Architect - Stratospheric Aerospace

Urban Sky; Denver (CO); On-site; USD 130,000 - 175,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock Options

Medical, Vision and Dental

Unlimited / Flexible Leave Policy

Job summary

Urban Sky is seeking a Senior RF Systems Engineer to own the RF domain across the company, from vehicle boards to ground stations. You will manage dense RF environments including SATCOM, GNSS, SDRs, and multi-node relay architectures, ensuring coexistence, link closure, and resilience in contested environments.

You will design, review, and optimize RF chains, antennas, and ground- and airborne systems, validate link budgets with hardware-in-the-loop tests, and lead secure, encrypted RF

Qualifications

• B.S. or M.S. in Electrical Engineering, Communications Engineering, or a related field.
• 7+ years of hands-on RF systems engineering across hardware and system levels, preferably in aerospace, satellite, tactical comms, or high-altitude platforms.
• Deep understanding of RF propagation, link budgets, modulation and coding, and antenna design principles.
• Board-level RF experience: able to find and fix desense and interference problems with a spectrum analyzer and a schematic.
• Hands-on test experience with spectrum analyzers, VNAs, signal generators, and antenna measurement.
• Experience with software-defined radios and mesh or relay network architectures.
• Working knowledge of secure communications (encryption, key management) as applied to RF links.
• Strong scripting/analysis skills for link modeling and test automation.

Responsibilities

• Review and optimize every emitting and receiving system across our avionics and devices (SATCOM, stratospheric command links, GNSS, SDRs), including board-level RF review with our electrical engineers: layout, filtering, shielding, desense, and co-site interference
• Review and optimize antenna selection, design, and placement across the fleet – LOS CSS radios, SDRs, SATCOM terminals, and GNSS
• Own RF link budgets across all mission phases and geometries, and validate them with hardware-in-the-loop and field testing
• Architect Urban Sky’s ground station systems and multi-node relay/bent-pipe topologies (balloon-to-balloon, balloon-to-ground, payload-to-ground)
• Develop solutions for MIMO architectures, mesh data backhaul, and efficient routing topology
• Harden RF systems for contested environments: jamming resilience, GPS protection, and graceful degradation
• Develop secure, encrypted networking standards for RF-borne data across vehicle, ground, and customer interfaces
• Lead RF integration and interference deconfliction for third-party payloads hosted on our platforms
• Evaluate RF-sensing partners and payloads
• Support spectrum planning, frequency coordination, and regulatory compliance (FCC, ITU)

Skills

RF systems engineering

Link budgets

Spectrum analysis

Schematic debugging

Test instrumentation

Software-defined radios

Secure communications

Scripting/analysis

Education

B.S. or M.S. in Electrical Engineering or related

Tools

Spectrum analyzers

VNAs

Signal generators

Antenna measurement

Job description

Urban Sky is seeking a Senior RF Systems Engineer to own the RF domain across the company, from vehicle boards to ground stations. You will manage dense RF environments including SATCOM, GNSS, SDRs, and multi-node relay architectures, ensuring coexistence, link closure, and resilience in contested environments.

You will design, review, and optimize RF chains, antennas, and ground- and airborne systems, validate link budgets with hardware-in-the-loop tests, and lead secure, encrypted RF