Software Defined Radio Hardware Associate (Summer 2027)
About The Position
Astranis builds advanced satellites for high orbits, expanding humanity’s reach into the solar system. Today Astranis satellites provide dedicated, secure networks to highly-sophisticated customers across the globe – large enterprises, sovereign governments, and the US military. With five satellites on orbit and many more set to launch soon, the company is servicing a backlog of more than $1 billion of commercial contracts. Astranis is the preferred satellite communications partner for buyers with stringent requirements for uptime, data security, network visibility, and customization. Astranis has raised over $1.2 billion from some of the world’s best investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, Blackrock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, and Snowpoint, and employs a team of 500 engineers and entrepreneurs. Astranis designs, builds, and operates its satellites out of its 153,000 sq. ft. headquarters in Northern California, USA. This is a Hardware Design Associate position on the Software Defined Radio Team for Summer 2027. Associate Engineer positions typically last for twelve weeks, and are salaried roles designed for students who have already received a bachelor's degree (or who will have done so before working at Astranis). As an Associate Engineer, you will have an amazing opportunity to work on hard problems — we pride ourselves on giving everyone at Astranis a chance to do meaningful work on challenging projects, and our Associate Engineers work on projects that are of equal importance and difficulty to the projects we give our full-time employees. Many past Associate Engineers have designed and tested hardware/software that is heading to space on our first satellite, and many now work at Astranis full-time. If you are still a college student, please apply to join us as an Intern.
Requirements
- A passion for hardware development, including working in a fast-paced environment and hands-on design and development
- Hold a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering or equivalent
- Demonstrated ability to personally design, build, and test PCBA hardware from scratch (student design team projects, design competitions, personal projects)
- Solid EE foundation in one or more of the following areas: analog design (op amps, transistors, RLC filters) digital design (FPGAs, SOCs, SERDES, DDR, LVDS) mixed signal design (ADCs, DACs, power integrity) RF design (Lineups, s-parameters, impedance matching)
Nice To Haves
- Experience building or using software defined radios
- Experience with Altium Designer (or other PCB design software)
- Experience with analysis software (ADS, ANSYS, Matlab)
- Experience with Python or similar programming languages
- Experience with soldering and rework
- Experience with EE lab bench equipment (power supply, oscilloscope, spectrum analyzers, signal generators, network analyzers, etc)
Responsibilities
- Design, simulate, implement, and test our internally developed software defined radio hardware
- Bringup and debug hardware in the lab with top of the line instruments and equipment
- Write code to help evaluate performance and automate testing of satellite hardware
- Integrate these systems into the spacecraft by working closely with the rest of the team
Benefits
- Salaried roles
- Opportunity to work on hard problems
- Chance to do meaningful work on challenging projects
- Projects of equal importance and difficulty to full-time employees
- Potential to design and test hardware/software heading to space
- Many past Associate Engineers now work at Astranis full-time
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What This Job Offers
Career Level
Entry Level
