Wireless Software Engineer

Specter; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Specter is seeking a Wireless Software Engineer in San Francisco to own the wireless software stack for our distributed mesh sensor network, handling radio configuration, fleet telemetry, and the tooling used to deploy and debug real sites.

You will collaborate with RF, Hardware Engineering, Embedded Software, and Backend teams to align wireless performance with video quality and latency while building automation and RF planning tools for real-world deployments.

Qualifications

• Strong Python and systems programming skills.
• Experience with Linux networking and remote headless devices.
• Solid knowledge of WLAN standards and driver interfaces.
• Experience with telemetry pipelines and data routes.
• Distributed systems experience and debugging abilities.
• Hardware-software debugging across radios, drivers, and kernel layers.
• Ability to read datasheets, driver sources, and register maps.
• Experience supporting field deployments and post-deployment debugging.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and maintain the wireless software running on Specter's deployed edge devices, including radio configuration and control, channel and power management, QoS policy, rate control, and the device-side interfaces for remote node interrogation.
• Own fleetwide telemetry and diagnostics: collect, transport, store, and analyze per-link statistics across hundreds of deployed nodes, enabling remote diagnosis of link degradation.
• Integrate and characterize vendor wireless chipsets, drivers, and firmware including driver-level failure modes and engineering around vendor limitations we do not control.
• Debug complex issues spanning radio, driver, kernel, and application layers; determine root causes and instrument systems for future diagnostics.
• Collaborate closely with RF, Hardware Engineering, Embedded Software, and Backend teams to co-design interfaces, support new radio platforms, and ensure strong connections between wireless performance and end-to-end video quality and latency.
• Build and maintain automation and tooling for fleet operations, including monitoring, alerting, configuration management, and targeted recovery processes.
• Develop RF simulation and deployment planning tools for real site design, including propagation modeling, channel assignment, and capacity estimation.
• Support field deployments through bring-up, site characterization, and post-deployment debugging, feeding insights from real-world behavior back into the design process.
• Contribute to the wireless foundations underpinning Specter’s next generation of autonomous and robotic platforms, such as drone communications and distributed node coordination.

Skills

Python

C/C++

Go

Rust

Linux

Wireless networking

cfg80211/nl80211

Tools

cfg80211/nl80211

hostapd

wpa_supplicant

Wireshark

Oscilloscope

Logic analyzers

Job description

Company Background

Specter's mission is to help automate the physical world.

Today, we build video sensors with state-of-the-art AI agents that answer any question, anywhere in their environments. Our systems can automatically detect and reason about any physical activity captured on camera, from security incidents (e.g. perimeter intrusion, theft, LPR), to safety monitoring (e.g. PPE detection, injured people), to operational efficiency (e.g. material tracking, congestion monitoring). We offer both long range wireless (1km range) and wired sensor variants to suit any deployment.

Our co-founders Xerxes and Philip are passionate about empowering our partners in the fast approaching world of physical AI and robotics. We are a small, fast growing team who hail from Anduril, Amazon, Tesla, Uber, and the U.S. Special Forces.

The Role

Specter is hiring a Wireless Software Engineer to own the wireless software stack across our distributed mesh sensor network, spanning radio configuration and control on the device, fleet-wide telemetry and diagnostics, and the tooling our RF team uses to design, deploy, and debug real sites.

Responsibilities:

• Design, implement, and maintain the wireless software running on Specter's deployed edge devices, including radio configuration and control, channel and power management, QoS policy, rate control, and the device-side interfaces for remote node interrogation.

• Own fleetwide telemetry and diagnostics: collect, transport, store, and analyze per-link statistics across hundreds of deployed nodes, enabling remote diagnosis of link degradation.

• Integrate and characterize vendor wireless chipsets, drivers, and firmware including driver-level failure modes and engineering around vendor limitations we do not control.

• Debug complex issues spanning radio, driver, kernel, and application layers; determine root causes and instrument systems for future diagnostics.

• Collaborate closely with RF, Hardware Engineering, Embedded Software, and Backend teams to co-design interfaces, support new radio platforms, and ensure strong connections between wireless performance and end-to-end video quality and latency.

• Build and maintain automation and tooling for fleet operations, including monitoring, alerting, configuration management, and targeted recovery processes.

• Develop RF simulation and deployment planning tools for real site design, including propagation modeling, channel assignment, and capacity estimation.

• Support field deployments through bring-up, site characterization, and post-deployment debugging, feeding insights from real-world behavior back into the design process.

• Contribute to the wireless foundations underpinning Specter’s next generation of autonomous and robotic platforms, such as drone communications and distributed node coordination.

What you'll bring

• Strong software engineering fundamentals, with fluency in Python and at least one systems language such as C, C++, Go, or Rust.

• Extensive Linux experience, including systemd services, working within the networking stack, and operating headless remote machines over SSH.

• Deep understanding of WLAN standards, including Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) MAC protocols, WFA protocols, and coexistence with other wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, UWB and cellular.

• Familiarity with the Linux wireless userspace: cfg80211/nl80211, hostapd, wpa_supplicant, and the related drivers.

• Experience with telemetry or data pipelines: collecting, storing, and querying operational data.

• Solid grasp of networking fundamentals across the whole stack from drivers up through application layer.

• Solid understanding of embedded system design principles, including memory estimation, resource allocation, power management, and performance optimization.

• Experience building and debugging distributed or networked systems.

• Proficiency with wireless performance analysis using tools such as Wireshark, logging frameworks, and low-level tracing.

• Hands-on experience debugging hardware/software interactions using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, protocol analyzers, and embedded logging tools.

• Ability to work at the hardware/software boundary, including reading datasheets, driver source, and register maps.

Nice to have

• Experience with sub-GHz wireless, 802.11ah, or mesh networking.

• Deep architectural understanding of LTE/5G Protocol Stacks (NAS, PDCP, RRC, RLC, MAC, PHY) and 3GPP specifications.

• Familiarity with embedded interfaces (UART, I2C, I2S, SPI, CAN, PCIe, etc.).

• Exposure to Video pipeline: encoder control, RTP or QUIC transport, and an understanding of the impact of packet loss on perceived quality.

• Familiarity with software-defined radio, signal processing, or spectrum analysis tools.

• Experience with time-series data infrastructure and observability tooling.

• Previous work with field-deployed hardware, where environmental and software issues both affect reliability.

• Understanding of QoS concepts and data path optimization algorithms.