Communications Engineer

Position Summary Blue Ops designs, builds, and fields autonomous unmanned surface vessels (USVs) for defense and national security customers. We are seeking a hands-on, mid-level Communications Engineer to support the design, integration, troubleshooting, testing, and fielding of vessel and ground-control communications systems.

This role is well suited for an engineer with an electrical engineering, RF communications, networking, or related technical background who enjoys working across wireless links, IP networks, embedded computers, and physical hardware. The successful candidate will work directly with RF radios, antennas, satellite terminals, cellular modems, routers, managed switches, and onboard communications equipment.

The focus of this position is reliable connectivity between vessels, ground-control stations, and supporting infrastructure. This engineer will configure and validate communications paths for command and control, telemetry, video, radar, and other payload data; isolate failures across RF links and network interfaces; and drive issues through verification and resolution.

This is a hands-on role. The engineer should be equally comfortable configuring a router, analyzing packet captures, reviewing Linux logs, and evaluating RF performance as they are inspecting antenna installations, testing cables, or working aboard a vessel during integration and sea trials. The engineer will independently execute assigned integration and troubleshooting tasks while collaborating with senior engineers on architecture, requirements, and design decisions.

Key Responsibilities Integrate, configure, and troubleshoot vessel and ground-control communications systems, including RF radios, satellite terminals, cellular connections, routers, switches, and antennas.

Configure and validate IP addressing, subnets, VLANs, routing, DHCP, firewall rules, VPNs, and multicast or broadcast traffic handling.

Support implementation and testing of multi-WAN connectivity, link failover, traffic prioritization, and bandwidth aggregation.

Evaluate communications performance using throughput, latency, jitter, packet loss, signal quality, and link availability measurements.

Develop and review RF link budgets, antenna placement, cable-loss estimates, and installation considerations such as polarization, isolation, and interference.

Diagnose connectivity and performance issues using packet captures, router diagnostics, Linux tools, RF test equipment, and system logs.

Integrate communications paths for command and control, telemetry, video, radar, and other onboard payload interfaces.

Support dockside checkout, sea trials, demonstrations, deliveries, and customer events; verify communications readiness before deployment.

Execute test procedures to validate coverage, failover behavior, recovery after outages, and performance under representative operating conditions.

Inspect and troubleshoot communications wiring, Ethernet and RF cabling, connectors, grounding, and equipment power.

Maintain network diagrams, IP address plans, equipment configurations, test results, and installation and troubleshooting procedures.

Identify recurring issues and work with autonomy, software, electrical, and systems engineering teams to implement durable corrective actions.

Required Qualifications 3–7 years of experience in communications engineering, RF systems, network engineering, systems integration, or a related technical role.

Hands-on experience integrating and troubleshooting RF or wireless communications equipment and IP networks.

Working knowledge of RF fundamentals, including link budgets, antenna gain, polarization, cable loss, line of sight, and interference.

Working knowledge of TCP/IP, UDP, Ethernet, subnetting, VLANs, routing,…