Wireless Software Engineer - Edge Networks & Telemetry

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

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.