{"id":1302697,"url":"https://alion.io/job/swan-dsp-sdr-receiver-engineer-navigation-communications","title":"DSP / SDR Receiver Engineer — Navigation & Communications (Contract)","company":{"id":3787237,"name":"Swan","domain":"swan.tech","url":"https://alion.io/company/swan-6","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":null},"role":"Hardware","role_family":"Hardware","seniority":null,"employment_type":"contractor","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":["US"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":106000,"max_usd":241000,"period":"year","method":"role_country_seniority_unknown","sample_n":2687},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Inertial Navigation","optional":false},{"name":"MATLAB","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2025-03-05T07:30:09Z","employer_posted_date":"2025-03-05","last_verified_at":"2026-10-18T10:38:26Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":592,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":591},"description":"About Us:\n Swan delivers the future of defense and industry through scalable autonomous products. Swan is backed by leading defense VCs including a16z's American Dynamism fund.\nDSP / SDR Receiver Engineer - Navigation & Communications\nWe are looking for a DSP / SDR engineer to help design, implement, and test software-defined radio receivers for navigation and communications applications. The role is focused on signal-processing receiver design: acquisition, tracking, synchronization, Doppler estimation, timing recovery, and real-time processing of RF signals.\nThe ideal candidate has hands-on experience building receiver signal-processing chains for GNSS, satellite communications, radar, wireless PHY, spectrum monitoring, or related RF systems.\nResponsibilities\nDesign and implement SDR receiver algorithms for real-world RF signals.\n\nDevelop acquisition, tracking, synchronization, and measurement-generation pipelines.\n\nEstimate Doppler, carrier phase, timing, delay, and signal quality metrics.\n\nWork with SDR platforms such as USRP/UHD, GNU Radio, RFSoC, or FPGA-based systems.\n\nAnalyze collected RF data and debug receiver performance in lab and field environments.\n\nEvaluate waveform structure, modulation, channel behavior, and receiver implementation tradeoffs.\n\nSupport navigation and communications experiments using GNSS, LEO satellite downlinks, or other opportunistic signals.\n\nDesired Background\nStrong candidates may come from one or more of the following areas:\nGNSS / PNT receiver design\n\nSatellite communications modem or PHY development\n\nRadar signal processing\n\nElectronic warfare, ELINT, SIGINT, or spectrum monitoring\n\nWireless PHY / LTE / 5G baseband processing\n\nReal-time SDR or FPGA-based signal processing\n\nUseful Skills\nSDR development with GNU Radio, USRP/UHD, RFSoC, or FPGA SDR platforms\n\nReal-time DSP implementation\n\nSignal acquisition and tracking loops\n\nPLL / FLL / DLL design\n\nDoppler estimation and tracking\n\nCarrier recovery and timing recovery\n\nMatched filtering and correlation-based detection\n\nFrame synchronization and preamble detection\n\nOFDM, TDMA, DVB-S2/DVB-S2X, or other modem PHY experience\n\nGNSS observables such as pseudorange, carrier phase, Doppler, clocks, and ephemerides\n\nNavigation filtering, EKFs, factor graphs, or INS/GNSS integration\n\nPython, C/C++, MATLAB, or similar signal-processing tools\n\nIdeal Candidate\nThe strongest candidate combines practical SDR implementation experience with deep receiver signal-processing intuition. They should be comfortable working with imperfect real-world RF data, debugging acquisition/tracking behavior, and turning signal-processing algorithms into working receiver software.\nExperience with GNSS, LEO satellite signals, satcom downlinks, radar, EW, SIGINT, or wireless PHY systems is especially relevant.","description_format":"text","description_chars":2813,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Defense AI","Drone AI"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-26T12:14:29Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":5,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.161,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":590,"expected_fill_days":27,"reasons":["conf:0","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/swan-dsp-sdr-receiver-engineer-navigation-communications","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/swan-dsp-sdr-receiver-engineer-navigation-communications.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-18T11:20:47Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":16874,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-19T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":3787237},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=3787237"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fswan-dsp-sdr-receiver-engineer-navigation-communications"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fswan-dsp-sdr-receiver-engineer-navigation-communications"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fswan-dsp-sdr-receiver-engineer-navigation-communications"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/swan-dsp-sdr-receiver-engineer-navigation-communications\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fswan-dsp-sdr-receiver-engineer-navigation-communications"}]}