The roleYou will build the satellite half of our prediction stack from scratch: the pipeline that ingests live orbital data for every visible LEO satellite, propagates it, computes what the link will look like, and hands that to the models that decide when an IoT device should transmit.
What you will buildAn automated pipeline pulling element sets every three hours for all operational LEO constellations.
- Orbital mechanics in production code: propagators, ephemeris formats, coordinate frames, pass prediction. If you have implemented SGP4 rather than only called it, say so
- Robust Python, and the judgement to drop to C or Rust when the 1 Hz budget demands it
- Real-time or near-real-time systems experience with a latency budget you were accountable for
- Building data pipelines that run unattended for months without silently degrading
- Comfort validating your own work against an independent reference and reporting the error honestly
Helpful, not required
- Ground segment or ground station scheduling software
- 3GPP NTN (Release 17 onward), or RF link budget fundamentals
- Edge deployment on Jetson-class hardware, containerised
- Working alongside ML teams on physics-informed feature engineering
- Prior delivery under a Canadian government contribution agreement, with milestone reporting
Hard requirementsWe work under Canadian defence and space contracts. You must be eligible to hold a Canadian security clearance and to work on controlled goods, which in practice means Canadian citizenship or permanent residency. This one has no exceptions. Only Canadian residents will be considered.
The role is Waterloo Region based. Field trial work is hands-on at our site, including equipment commissioning and site visits, so this is not a remote position.
What this actually looks likePhoton-IV is a small team. We have delivered a program with the Department of National Defence and have a follow-on ahead of us. You will not have a team beneath you, you will not be shielded from the customer.
The upside: you own a subsystem end to end, your validation report goes to a federal agency with your name on it, and there is nothing between you and the problem.