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Salary: USD 100,000 - 150,000 / annual
K2 Space is building the largest and highest-power satellites ever flown, backed by over $1 billion in total funding from leading investors including Altimeter Capital, ICONIQ, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, and T. Rowe Price. The company has over $1 billion in signed contracts across commercial and US government customers and is mass-producing the highest-power satellite platforms ever built for missions from LEO to deep space. With multiple launches planned for 2027 and plans to scale to 100 satellites per year, K2 is at the forefront of the new era of mass-abundant spacecraft design.
In this role, you will be responsible for component management, system integration, and operation of radiofrequency (RF) electronics across some of the biggest and most powerful satellites ever deployed in space. In your first 6 months, you will develop, design, own, test, and integrate new RF and global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), including radios, antennas, and other hardware. You will collaborate with a team of RF, FPGA, software, mechanical, and electrical engineers to develop RF systems and execute environmental and performance testing to refine designs. By the end of your first year, you will have flown your RF systems in space and downlinked critical mission and payload data. Following this, you will enhance system reliability and design even more capable RF systems for future generations of large and powerful spacecraft.
Key responsibilities include: overseeing all technical and programmatic aspects of RF systems that fly on the satellite, including telemetry, command, and GNSS radios, antennas, and link budgets from UHF through Ka-band; serving as responsible engineer for flight hardware from design through integration and operations on orbit; owning acceptance and qualification screening of hardware designs through environmental testing such as vibration, shock, thermal, and thermal vacuum testing; working with internal and external stakeholders to integrate designs into spacecraft systems and operate hardware in flight; owning FCC licensing and ground segment compatibility testing and coordination; and leading vehicle integration and testing efforts to ensure hardware reliability and deconfliction with payload customers.
Qualifications: Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or related STEM field; 1+ years of experience in microwave/RF engineering; fundamental RF knowledge including familiarity with crafting RF link budgets and antenna placement planning; familiarity with Python or MATLAB; experience with RF test equipment such as vector network analyzers (VNA) and spectrum analyzers; ability to work in a fast-paced, high-velocity startup atmosphere. Nice-to-have skills include experience with flying hardware in space and creating/maintaining link budgets; end-to-end testing with flight hardware, software, and ground station providers; experience with environmental testing for space electronics such as thermal, vibration, TVAC, radiation, and EMI/EMC testing per standards such as SMC-S-016; experience with RF modeling and analysis software tools such as Ansys Electronics Desktop HFSS, Altair FEKO, Keysight ADS, or Cadence AWR Microwave Office; familiarity with software-defined radio development including data converters and clock trees; familiarity with digital communications systems and theory including spread spectrum, forward error correction, and modulation types such as BPSK and QAM; and ability to research novel solutions for unique large-scale satellite RF systems including satellite communications and electronic warfare.
