Principal L1 PHY & Modem Implementation Engineer

At Blue Origin, we envision millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth. We’re working to develop reusable, safe, and low-cost space vehicles and systems within a culture of safety, collaboration, and inclusion. Join our team of problem solvers as we add new chapters to the history of spaceflight!  

Blue Origin is pioneering the future of space-based connectivity with TeraWave, a revolutionary satellite communications network designed to deliver symmetrical data speeds of up to 6 Tbps anywhere on Earth. This network will service tens of thousands of enterprise, data center, and government users who require reliable connectivity for critical operations.

As part of a hardworking team of engineers, you will develop and optimize L1 PHY and modem implementations for the TeraWave system. You will work across physical-layer processing, DSP implementation, HW/SW partitioning, and modem integration to develop high-performance implementations for high-throughput satellite communication systems.

This is a hands-on senior technical role working closely with modem architecture, DSP algorithms, ASIC, firmware, FPGA, BSP, and system engineering teams from implementation and pre-silicon development through integration and system validation.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop and optimize L1 PHY and modem implementations for high-throughput satellite communication systems.

• Implement and integrate PHY processing functions including framing, FEC processing, rate matching, scrambling, modulation/demodulation, FFT/IFFT processing, reference-signal processing, and related transmit and receive functions.

• Develop and optimize C/C++ or equivalent implementations of L1 PHY and DSP processing functions for embedded and real-time modem systems.

• Define and evaluate HW/SW partitioning of modem functions across programmable processors, DSP engines, FPGA/ASIC hardware accelerators, and embedded software.

• Analyze and optimize modem processing across throughput, latency, computational complexity, memory bandwidth, data movement, and processor utilization.

• Optimize multicore processing, memory organization, buffering, concurrency, and hardware-accelerator utilization for high-throughput L1 processing.

• Work closely with modem algorithm engineers to translate communications and DSP algorithms into efficient production implementations.

• Work closely with ASIC, FPGA, firmware, BSP, and system engineering teams to define and integrate interfaces between L1 software and modem hardware accelerators.

• Support pre-silicon verification, simulation, prototyping, system integration, and post-silicon validation of L1 PHY and modem implementations.

• Debug complex system-level issues spanning L1 software, DSP processing, hardware accelerators, firmware, and ASIC interfaces.

• Evaluate modem architecture and implementation tradeoffs across performance, complexity, throughput, latency, memory, power, and hardware resources.

• Provide technical guidance and contribute to key L1 PHY, HW/SW partitioning, and modem implementation architecture decisions.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical discipline.

• 10+ years of experience in L1 PHY software, modem implementation, DSP implementation, embedded communications software, or related areas.

• Strong understanding of OFDM-based communication systems and major transmit and receive PHY processing chains.

• Experience implementing or integrating L1 PHY processing on CPUs, DSPs, SoCs, FPGAs, ASIC accelerators, or heterogeneous processing architectures.

• Strong understanding of HW/SW partitioning and hardware acceleration of computationally intensive modem functions.

• Experience with performance profiling and optimization, multicore processing, memory management, and efficient data movement.

• Experience working with interfaces between L1 software, embedded firmware, and custom hardware or hardware accelerators.

• Ability to work across modem, DSP, ASIC, FPGA, firmware, BSP, and system engineering teams.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master's degree or Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Communications, Signal Processing, or a related field.

• Deep experience with L1 PHY and modem implementation for wireless, cellular, satellite, or broadband communication systems.

• Experience with FEC processing including LDPC, Turbo, or Polar coding, rate matching, and LLR processing.

• Experience with FFT/IFFT processing, modulation/demodulation, MIMO, beamforming, or other computationally intensive PHY functions.

• Familiarity with synchronization, carrier and sampling frequency offset compensation, timing recovery, channel estimation, equalization, and SNR estimation from an implementation and integration perspective.

• Experience with SIMD/vector processing, multicore optimization, DSP processors, or other high-performance embedded computing architectures.

• Experience with fixed-point implementation and translation of floating-point DSP algorithms into production implementations.

• Experience with MATLAB, Python, or equivalent environments for simulation, analysis, and implementation validation.

• Experience with embedded real-time operating systems, BSPs, device drivers, or SoC initialization.

• Experience with pre-silicon simulation, FPGA prototyping, hardware emulation, or post-silicon modem bring-up and validation.

• Experience with satellite or non-terrestrial communication systems.

• Familiarity with 3GPP PHY specifications and modern broadband wireless communication systems.

Culture Statement

Don’t meet all desired requirements? Studies have shown that some people are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single desired qualification. At Blue Origin, we are dedicated to building an authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every desired qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

Candidates may be subject to verification and BGS screening as per applicable law.