Electrical Engineer, Optical Communications

Electrical Engineer, Optical Communications

About Cowboy Space Corp.

Mission
Cowboy Space Corporation is solving the global energy crisis by building the infrastructure for abundant, resilient space-based solar energy. We are tackling one of humanity’s most complex engineering challenges with a world-class team dedicated to delivering a revolutionary power platform. Cowboy Space Corporation is transforming how civilization powers, computes and connects - from orbit to Earth.

Background
Cowboy Space Corporation is building the infrastructure to power and connect the orbital economy. Our modular, scalable satellites collect sunlight in Low Earth Orbit to enable multiple integrated applications: transmitting energy via infrared lasers (space-to-earth and space-to-space), powering on-orbit high-performance computing clusters (GPU/TPU), and providing secure, high bandwidth optical data transport.

Current energy and data systems rely on complex logistics and outdated infrastructure. Cowboy Space Corporation overcomes these challenges by enabling direct, on-demand, secure, and scalable energy distribution and data processing from space. This will revolutionize how we operate in orbit and on Earth, supporting the rapidly expanding space industrial base, ISAM (In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing) operations, remote regions, and military bases.

Baiju Bhatt founded Cowboy Space Corporation in 2024. Inspired by his father’s work with NASA Langley Research Center, Baiju earned his B.S. in Physics and M.S. in Mathematics at Stanford before co-founding Robinhood, now a public company that has helped over 20 million Americans access the financial system. Cowboy Space Corporation has raised ~$365 million from Index Ventures, Interlagos, Construct Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and others.

This is an ambitious mission that demands extraordinary talent. Cowboy Space Corporation ’s team has worked at places like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Stoke Space, Astranis and NASA, and is based in San Carlos, CA. If you're ready to solve complex technical challenges and help build the most important energy company in the world, we want to hear from you.

The Role

We are looking for an RF Engineer to design and deploy advanced communication systems with a strong emphasis on high-speed optical communications and software-defined radio architectures. This role sits at the boundary of networking, RF avionics, and embedded compute, requiring a systems-level approach to building robust, flight-capable communication pipelines.

You will own the development of RF and hybrid RF/optical communication subsystems capable of delivering high-throughput data links under real-world constraints including motion, atmospheric interference, thermal variation, and limited power budgets.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and integrate communication PCBAs, modulators, and devices for airborne or space-based platforms
• Architect and implement SDR-based communication pipelines (modulation, encoding, synchronization, and signal processing)
• Develop high-speed optical communication links (free-space optics / laser comms), including link budgeting, pointing and tracking, and alignment strategies with intelligent failover and redundancy
• Perform system-level trade studies from high-speed optical links
• Design and validate end-to-end communication chains, from data streams, through communication PCBAs, and to optical front-ends
• Collaborate closely with avionics, firmware, and compute teams to integrate comms systems into flight hardware
• Develop test infrastructure for lab and field validation, including over-the-air testing and optical link validation setups
• Analyze performance under real-world conditions (noise, interference, Doppler, atmospheric turbulence, pointing loss) and iterate rapidly
• Own documentation, interface definitions, and system performance metrics for communication subsystems

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Physics, or related field
• 3+ years of experience in RF systems, communications engineering, or related domain
• Strong fundamentals in communication theory (modulation, coding,…