Senior Spacecraft MAC Layer Software Engineer

Blue Origin; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 248,830 - 348,362; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision coverage

401(k) with company match

Paid parental leave

Job summary

Blue Origin seeks a Senior Wireless Software Engineer for Spacecraft Systems to design and implement a custom MAC layer for the TeraWave network, enabling high-throughput, low-latency communication across space and ground links.

You will work with PHY and network teams to deliver a wire-like wireless stack in a challenging LEO environment, including handovers, QoS, and scalable constellation-wide architectures. A bachelor's degree plus 7+ years of relevant experience is required.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related technical field.
• 7+ years of professional software development experience in wireless networking or embedded systems
• Mastery of C and C++ in Linux real-time (RTOS) or high-performance user-space environments
• Deep understanding of wireless MAC fundamentals, including framing, contention versus scheduled access, flow control, and QoS prioritization

Responsibilities

• Architect and implement high-performance, low-overhead MAC protocols tailored for point-to-point and point-to-multipoint satellite links within the TeraWave constellation
• Develop sophisticated TDMA and demand-assigned multiple access (DAMA) schedulers to manage bandwidth across thousands of beams with microsecond precision
• Implement robust error control, retransmission (ARQ), and adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) logic capable of reacting instantly to fading conditions and orbital transitions
• Build software logic for seamless make-before-break handovers between satellites and ground stations operating in high-velocity orbital environments
• Optimize the interface between the wireless MAC layer and high-speed packet processing engines such as DPDK and VPP, ensuring zero-copy data paths and minimal jitter
• Design MAC layer architectures for constellation-scale deployments, ensuring efficient performance as the TeraWave network grows to thousands of satellites
• Collaborate with PHY layer engineers and network architects to align custom wireless stack design with system-level TeraWave performance requirements
• Drive technical decision-making related to MAC layer architecture, including framing strategies, contention versus scheduled access models, flow control, and QoS prioritization frameworks
• Lead MAC protocol development through the full lifecycle, from custom state machine design and simulation through hardware integration and field testing

Skills

C/C++

Linux RTOS

Wireless MAC

TDMA/DAMA

ARQ/AMC

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/EE

Tools

DPDK

VPP

eBPF

ns-3

FPGA interface

Job description

Blue Origin seeks a Senior Wireless Software Engineer for Spacecraft Systems to design and implement a custom MAC layer for the TeraWave network, enabling high-throughput, low-latency communication across space and ground links.

You will work with PHY and network teams to deliver a wire-like wireless stack in a challenging LEO environment, including handovers, QoS, and scalable constellation-wide architectures. A bachelor's degree plus 7+ years of relevant experience is required.