Sr. Communication Systems Engineer

Project Kuiper is an initiative to launch a constellation of Low Earth Orbit satellites that will provide low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world. As a Systems Engineer, this role is primarily responsible for the design, development and integration of Ka band and S/C band communication payload and customer terminal systems.

The Role:
Be part of the team defining the overall communication system and architecture of Project Kuiper’s broadband wireless network. This is a unique opportunity to innovate and define groundbreaking wireless technology with few legacy constraints. The team develops and designs the communication system of Kuiper and analyzes its overall system level performance such as for overall throughput, latency, system availability, packet loss etc.
This role in particular will be responsible for leading the effort in designing and developing advanced technology and solutions for communication system. This role will also be responsible developing advanced L1/L2 proof of concept HW/SW systems to improve the performance and reliability of the Kuiper LEO network. In particular this role will be responsible for using concepts from digital signal processing, information theory, wireless communications to develop novel solutions for achieving ultra-high performance LEO network. This role will also be part of a team and develop simulation tools with particular emphasis on modeling the physical layer aspects such as advanced receiver modeling and abstraction, interference cancellation techniques, FEC abstraction models etc. This role will also play a critical role in the integration and verification of various HW and SW sub-systems as a part of system integration and link bring-up and verification

In this role you will:
• Work closely with implementation teams to evaluate and simulate expected system level performance and provide quick feedback on potential improvements
• Work with the PHY and Network teams to seamlessly integrate the link-layer within the Network stack.
• Integrate the various link-layers working closely with implementation teams.
• Verify link budget and RF line-ups in RF and IF configurations.
• Create time synchronized setups with signal generators / spectrum analyzers and use these to verify timing budgets.
• Architect and document time/frequency/space acquisition and tracking algorithms. Understand Doppler pre and post compensation techniques with CFO/SFO in LEO comms systems. Experience with channel emulators is a plus.
• Work with a team to develop novel customized test solutions using embedded programing to generate and capture waveforms in real-time. Experience with software defined radios is highly preferred.
• Work with a team and take responsibility for power, clock, RF, air, network debugging in lab.
• Contribute development-test bring up procedures with Linux, Python, bash scripting etc.
• Willing to work in lab environment and stay in front of the setups for debugging with reference equipment
• Willing to work on scripting to change a SW/HW pieces incrementally and understand its effect on payload (via probing RF, IF, clock, channel quality messages) with help of Specan, siggen, scope, frequency counter, attenuators etc.
• Unblock themselves with reaching out RF, ASIC, SW, Comsys, Testbed teams to move forward in testing and integration
• Ability to adapt test plans daily based on capabilities of HW/SW delivered by the dev teams



Export Control Requirement:
Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (i.e., current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum.

Basic Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, related discipline, or equivalent experience
• 5+ years professional experience working in wireless communications at the system or implementation level.

Preferred Qualifications

• PhD with emphasis in broadband wireless or wireline communication systems
• Deep understanding of Multiple access systems such as OFDMA, TDMA, CDMA, etc.
• Experience in test automation setup and scripting languages such as Python/Perl/Matlab.
• Experience with software defined radios and embedded programming in C/C++ and VHDL/Verilog is a plus.
• Knowledge of ethernet protocols such as IP, UDP, TCP, HTTP and analysis tools such as Wireshark
• Must have the ability to work in a small team and drive to go beyond expectations to deliver results
• Experience with current software development processes and tools including Agile, TDD, BDD, CI, Git
• Broad spectrum of knowledge to be able to understand end-to-end network system architecture from wireless physical layer all the way up to application end-point
• Implementation exp