Role highlights

Staff Engineer - Satellite Communications

Location: Espoo, Finland

Department: Fleet Control and Satellite Communications

Reports to: Director, Fleet Control and Satellite Communications

Employment type: Permanent

Workplace model: Hybrid. 3 days a week at the office

Employment is subject to applicable security screening (incl. SUPO, where required)

Why this role matters

As a Staff Engineer in Satellite Communications, you will own the satellite-to-ground link, the core communications protocols, and the end-to-end transmission of data from ground stations to customers. Trend is that our constellation produces an increasing volume of data and we want it down faster and more reliably. As we scale, the communications link sets the limit on what we deliver and how fast customers receive it.

You'll own the end-to-end communication stack: the satellite-to-ground link (X-band, Ka-band and S-band), the underlying protocols used, and the transmission of data from ground stations to customers. Today these decisions are spread across several teams. This role brings them under one technical owner.

The work sits where software meets physics. On one side are link budgets, modulation and coding, and spectrum constraints; on the other are schedulers, distributed systems and production operations. The hardest problems live where the two meet.

You own what you build, from design to production, across a stack that combines cloud, on-prem and real hardware. Our engineering culture is AI-positive, with active use of copilots and LLMs to improve speed, code quality and productivity.

Who We Are

ICEYE is the world leader in sovereign intelligence from space. We deliver persistent monitoring capabilities to detect and respond to changes in any location on Earth.

ICEYE owns the world's largest and most advanced SAR (synthetic aperture radar) satellite constellation. To our customers we provide intelligence with unmatched quality, latency and revisit times, in any weather, day or night. To governments who choose to operate their own constellation we provide this proven capability as a sovereign system.

ICEYE-built constellations serve customers in defence and intelligence, environmental monitoring, insurance and emergency management. We enable fast decisions that contribute to a safer future.

Founded and headquartered in Finland, ICEYE operates globally with over 1000 employees across Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.

Your day-to-day responsibilities

Own the architecture of the satellite-to-ground link acrossX-band and Ka-band payload downlink and S-band command and control

Measure what the constellation delivers against its theoretical capacity, and lead the work that closes the gap

Design how data moves from ground station to customer, including latency tiers and delivery accounting

Build alongside software engineers, contributing code and reviews, not only architecture documents

Lead technical initiatives across team boundaries and align teams on link and data path decisions

Grow satellite communications expertise across the domain through mentoring, design reviews and shared standards

What we're looking for

Must haves:

Communications engineering on at least one flown mission, including personally diagnosing an anomaly on a live satellite.

High-rate payload downlink experience in X-band or Ka-band, beyond S-band command and control

Ability to build and defend a link budget: EIRP, G/T, Eb/N0, margin, rain fade, elevation constraints

Practical CCSDS knowledge: transfer frames, virtual channels, synchronisation and channel coding, file delivery

Experience owning how data moves from a ground station to where it is consumed, with latency and completeness guarantees

Hands-on coding in Python, Go, C++ or similar; you ship code, not just designs.

Nice to haves

Active use of AI-assisted development tools (e.g., copilots, LLMs) to improve productivity, code quality, and problem-solving

Fleet-scale contact planning and scheduling across commercial ground station networks, especially leased third-party capacity