Lead Radar Engineer, Mars Orbiter Verified today
About the Role
You will be the technical lead and responsible engineer for a wideband UHF shallow radar sounder for a Mars orbiter mission. You own the instrument from design through spacecraft integration, calibration, and commissioning, with no hand-off to another team mid-stream.
The instrument operates in two modes: a sounder mode that measures subsurface layer reflections and a radiometer mode that measures the temperature of subsurface layers over a wide footprint.
This is a hybrid role: you will personally execute significant portions of the design and analysis while providing technical leadership, working closely with science partners as their primary engineering counterpart. You will co-design the instrument against science objectives and develop the flight hardware and processing implementations.
Key Responsibilities
- Own the system design for the radar electronics, signal processing chain, and antenna system at the vehicle level for both sounder and radiometer modes, including instrument performance, power, and mass budgets, link budgets, and SNR/penetration-depth analyses
- Lead waveform trade studies in collaboration with the science partners, implement the waveforms and baseline algorithms they develop, and co-design with the science team to ensure the instrument meets science adequacy and mission science objectives
- Lead the hardware development, including prototype development and validation at the brass board level ahead of flight designs
- Define the instrument calibration scheme for both radar and radiometer modes
- Coordinate hardware development across RF, digital, power, and mechanical disciplines, along with firmware and software development
- Lead instrument qualification and acceptance testing, integration into the spacecraft, and terrestrial analog flight testing, including test integration and post-flight data review
- Perform spectrum licensing and frequency coordination for instrument operation and testing and support instrument calibration and on-orbit commissioning
Requirements
- 7+ years of experience in electrical hardware development, such as software defined radios, radar transceivers, or sophisticated digital processors
- Demonstrated ability to develop and manage radar system performance budgets
- Experience with analysis and modeling of radar returns and radar performance
- Experience implementing radio or radar transceivers as software-defined radios
- Field testing, flight testing, or spaceflight experience with radio or radar transceivers
- Deep expertise in one or more of the following: implementation of signal processing chains in FPGA and/or GPU processing; design of mixed-signal and digital PCBs, such as software-defined radios or board-level FPGA designs; RF circuit design, including power amplifiers, low-noise amplifiers, and filters; antenna design and verification
Nice to Have
- Experience with microwave radiometry or radiometer instrument design
- Familiarity with planetary or terrestrial radars (e.g., SHARAD, MARSIS, RIMFAX, ice-penetrating radar)
- Hands-on experience with AMD/Xilinx RFSoC or Zynq UltraScale+ platforms
- Experience with spectrum licensing and frequency coordination for experimental or space systems
- Experience with polarimetric radar and full-polarimetry calibration
- Experience taking RF payloads through PDR/CDR, qualification, and spacecraft integration
Compensation
Hiring range: $175,000 to $263,000 USD. Actual compensation determined based on experience, qualifications, and other job-related factors.
Relativity Space offers competitive salary and equity, generous PTO and sick leave policy, parental leave, annual learning and development stipend, and additional benefits.