DSP / SDR Receiver Engineer
Swan
DSP / SDR Receiver Engineer
Swan
Autonomous UAV navigation in GPS-denied environments
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
Swan develops autonomous systems for defense and industrial use. Its main products are unmanned aerial vehicles and software that let these drones navigate, map, and operate in GPS-denied environments while keeping electromagnetic emissions low. The software stack combines data from LiDAR, cameras, and inertial sensors to make real-time decisions, and it runs on C++, Python, and ROS-compatible frameworks to control autonomous navigation, perception, and mission execution. Swan differentiates itself by targeting GPS-denied, electromagnetically contested settings and emphasizing scalable, adaptable platforms that can be deployed across real-world robotic systems. It is backed by defense-focused venture capital and has been selected by the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit for Project Artemis to develop long-range, one-way autonomous platform prototypes, signaling a goal to provide reliable, unmanned systems for military and industrial applications in challenging environments.
Explore more opportunities at Swan