DSP / SDR Receiver Engineer — Navigation & Communications (Contract)

About Us: 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. DSP / SDR Receiver Engineer — Navigation & Communications We 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. The ideal candidate has hands-on experience building receiver signal-processing chains for GNSS, satellite communications, radar, wireless PHY, spectrum monitoring, or related RF systems. Responsibilities • Design and implement SDR receiver algorithms for real-world RF signals. • Develop acquisition, tracking, synchronization, and measurement-generation pipelines. • Estimate Doppler, carrier phase, timing, delay, and signal quality metrics. • Work with SDR platforms such as USRP/UHD, GNU Radio, RFSoC, or FPGA-based systems. • Analyze collected RF data and debug receiver performance in lab and field environments. • Evaluate waveform structure, modulation, channel behavior, and receiver implementation tradeoffs. • Support navigation and communications experiments using GNSS, LEO satellite downlinks, or other opportunistic signals. Desired Background Strong candidates may come from one or more of the following areas: • GNSS / PNT receiver design • Satellite communications modem or PHY development • Radar signal processing • Electronic warfare, ELINT, SIGINT, or spectrum monitoring • Wireless PHY / LTE / 5G baseband processing • Real-time SDR or FPGA-based signal processing Useful Skills • SDR development with GNU Radio, USRP/UHD, RFSoC, or FPGA SDR platforms • Real-time DSP implementation • Signal acquisition and tracking loops • PLL / FLL / DLL design • Doppler estimation and tracking • Carrier recovery and timing recovery • Matched filtering and correlation-based detection • Frame synchronization and preamble detection • OFDM, TDMA, DVB-S2/DVB-S2X, or other modem PHY experience • GNSS observables such as pseudorange, carrier phase, Doppler, clocks, and ephemerides • Navigation filtering, EKFs, factor graphs, or INS/GNSS integration • Python, C/C++, MATLAB, or similar signal-processing tools Ideal Candidate The 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. Experience with GNSS, LEO satellite signals, satcom downlinks, radar, EW, SIGINT, or wireless PHY systems is especially relevant.