(Senior) Engineer, Payload Network & Timing, meoSphere

PROGRAMME DESCRIPTION

meoSphere is SES’s next-generation Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellite constellation, designed to deliver secure connectivity services to government agencies, enterprises, and commercial customers. It will also provide high-speed broadband internet to eliminate global connectivity dead zones.

To accelerate development timelines, reduce costs, and ensure quality, SES is internalizing a critical segment of the satellite supply chain: the final integration of partner satellite platforms with SES’s software-defined payloads, all within a cutting-edge manufacturing and test facility.

ROLE DESCRIPTION SUMMARY

This role sits at the heart of a fully digital, software‑defined satellite payload. You will architect the network fabric and timing backbone that makes regenerative processing, beamforming, and inter‑satellite routing behave as a single coherent machine—with deterministic performance, timing discipline, and zero tolerance for ambiguity.

If you enjoy designing systems where physics, networking, and real‑time behaviour collide, this role gives you direct ownership of one of the hardest problems in modern space payloads.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• The payload timing architecture end‑to‑end: You define and own PTP (IEEE 1588v2) and SyncE across distributed on‑board nodes, including master/slave hierarchies, clock discipline, and holdover behaviour. The payload works—or fails—based on your decisions.
• The internal payload network fabric: You architect the L2/L3 switching and routing logic that moves traffic deterministically between On‑Board Processing, Digital Beamforming, Service Links, Feeder Links, and Optical Inter‑Satellite Links.
• Deterministic performance under real load: You design QoS classes and shaping policies, then validate them under congestion. Jitter, wander, latency, and packet loss are not abstract metrics—they are first‑class design constraints.
• Technical leadership by design authority: You are the payload’s reference for networking and timing. You drive architecture trade‑offs, own interface definitions, and make decisions that scale from lab bring‑up to flight hardware.

COMPETENCIES, QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE

• Degree in Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Telecommunications, Physics, or a related field.

• Strong experience designing and owning timing‑critical and/or high‑performance networked systems, with direct responsibility for correctness, stability, and runtime behaviour.
• Deep hands‑on expertise with precision time and synchronization technologies, including IEEE 1588v2 (PTP) and SyncE, and a solid understanding of clock hierarchy, discipline, and holdover behaviour.
• Proven ability to architect and reason about L2/L3 networks in complex systems, including routing, switching, VLANs, multicast, and deterministic traffic behaviour.
• Experience designing and validating QoS and traffic shaping mechanisms under congestion and stress conditions.
• Practical exposure to high‑throughput data‑plane processing, such as DPDK, XDP, or equivalent high‑speed packet processing frameworks.
• Strong system‑level mindset: able to translate requirements into clean architectures, make sound trade‑offs, and document interfaces clearly.
• Comfortable acting as a technical authority in a focused domain, driving decisions and aligning other engineers around a coherent design.

Nice to have

• Experience working on distributed, real‑time, or hardware‑adjacent systems where latency, jitter, and determinism are first‑order constraints.
• Hands‑on use of traffic generation and analysis tools (e.g., Spirent, Ixia) and familiarity with jitter / wander characterization.
• Background in space, aerospace, telecom, or other safety‑critical or mission‑critical environments where systems must work exactly as designed.
• Track record of simplifying complex systems without hiding risk or deferring hard problems.

What success looks like

• The payload maintains tight frequency and phase alignment across distributed nodes—even through mode changes and degraded conditions.
• Traffic flows are predictable, deterministic, and debuggable under peak load.
• The network architecture scales cleanly across payload functions without timing hacks or hidden coupling.
• Other engineers trust your designs because they are simple where possible, precise where required.

OTHER KEY REQUIREMENTS

• Eligibility for ESA/EU/NATO/National SECRET personnel security clearances. Candidates must be prepared to undergo a security clearance procedure, as this position may require holding such clearance, is considered an asset.
• Willing to work at least 60% onsite from office
• Able to travel nationally & internationally