Senior RF Communications Engineer
Listed on 2025-12-02
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Engineering
Systems Engineer, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace / Aviation / Avionics
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About Urban Sky:
Urban Sky is a venture-backed aerospace startup that pioneers utilization of the stratosphere and reimagines the way humans view and analyze the earth. We design, build, operate, and sell stratospheric balloon systems, and the data we collect supports a wide range of applications, from real-time wildfire monitoring to urban mapping. Our technology is also employed by government customers including the Department of Defense (DoD), NASA, and others.
Urban Sky sends flight vehicles to the stratosphere on a weekly basis.
About Urban Sky:
Urban Sky is a venture-backed aerospace startup that pioneers utilization of the stratosphere and reimagines the way humans view and analyze the earth. We design, build, operate, and sell stratospheric balloon systems, and the data we collect supports a wide range of applications, from real-time wildfire monitoring to urban mapping. Our technology is also employed by government customers including the Department of Defense (DoD), NASA, and others.
Urban Sky sends flight vehicles to the stratosphere on a weekly basis.
Our team consists of engineers, makers, developers, and doers who believe in the power of human potential when passion meets utility within a small, supportive team. At Urban Sky we strive to create a team culture grounded in candor, inclusion, respect and empowerment.
We aim to build the next chapter of stratospheric history in Denver and are seeking self-starting, open-minded, and hard-working team members.
About
The Role:
Urban Sky is seeking an experienced RF Communications Engineer to lead the design, configuration, and optimization of communication networks for high-altitude relay and bent-pipe systems to support a growing ecosystem of 3rd party payloads integrating with the Urban Sky Microballoon platform. This role focuses on achieving and maintaining link closure across all mission phases, ensuring reliable, high-bandwidth data transfer between airborne, spaceborne, and ground segments and collaborative iterative engagement with internal and external stakeholders, partners and customers.
Key Functions:
- Perform detailed RF link budget analyses to ensure end-to-end communication reliability across dynamic mission geometries and environmental conditions.
- Define and validate system parameters including transmit power, antenna gain, modulation, coding, and data rate to ensure link margin sufficiency.
- Develop and maintain network configuration documentation for multi-node relay or bent-pipe architectures.
- Configure and validate RF network topologies, frequency plans, and routing paths for dynamic relay networks.
- Interface with government and customer stakeholders to optimize and configure mission parameters.
- Support bent-pipe communication architectures, including balloon-to-balloon, balloon-to-payload, balloon-to-ground, and payload-to-ground paths.
- Optimize network performance across multiple platforms, ensuring robustness against interference, Doppler shifts, and propagation losses.
- Collaborate with systems and payload engineers to ensure RF subsystem integration meets mission requirements.
- Conduct hardware-in-the-loop and field validation tests of RF links, including end-to-end connectivity and throughput testing.
- Develop automated tools for link monitoring, network status, and performance reporting.
- Support real-time mission operations to monitor and troubleshoot link performance.
- Analyze post-mission RF telemetry to refine link models and update configuration parameters.
- Develop security hardened RF and data communications network standards.
- B.S. or M.S. in Electrical Engineering, Communications Engineering, or a related field.
- 6–8+ years of hands-on experience in RF systems engineering, preferably within aerospace, satellite, or high-altitude communications.
- Proficiency in link budget modeling tools (e.g., Python, STK, MATLAB, System Vue, or equivalent).
- Deep understanding of RF…
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