Location: Onsite - Austin, TX
Employment Type: Direct Hire, Full-Time
Job Title: Radar Engineer
About 9 Mothers
The modern battlefield has changed. Cheap, autonomous suicide drones have turned the tactical advantage upside down, and the world is looking for a solution. At 9 Mothers, we aren’t just "innovating" - we are building the shield.
Backed by top-tier investors, we develop AI powered machines designed to intercept and neutralize Group 1/sUAS threats in real-time. Our flagship product is a low-power, counter-drone system built for the edge - on vehicles, at bases, or in a soldier's pack.
Why 9 Mothers?
While others build for "awareness" or "long-term research," we build for the immediate survival of those in harm’s way. We are a team of hackers, engineers, and mission-driven builders who value field-ready capability over polished slide decks. If you want to see your code or hardware in the field next month - not next year - this is your playground.
Position Summary
9 Mothers is hiring a Radar Engineer to own the radar sensing layer of our counter-sUAS kill chain. In this role, you will integrate and tune radars from multiple vendors so that their detections and tracks feed cleanly into our platform - alongside our passive acoustic (Vor) and in-house visual detection stack - giving Edda and future systems an earlier, more reliable picture of incoming threats.
You will own the full radar lifecycle: characterizing sensors, writing the software that ingests and processes radar data, tuning radar configurations for performance against small, fast, low-RCS targets in cluttered environments, and validating that performance on the range. This role sits at the intersection of RF engineering, embedded and real-time software, and systems integration in a fast-moving defense startup environment.
Essential Duties
Radar Characterization: Run bench and range characterization of the
radars we field (e.g., FMCW, pulse-Doppler, electronically scanned arrays) to verify vendor performance claims and establish baselines for tuning.
Radar Integration: Integrate multiple radar models into our counter-drone platform, including mechanical/electrical interfaces, timing and synchronization, coordinate-frame alignment, and vendor SDKs, APIs, and data protocols.
Software Development: Design, build, and maintain the software that configures radars and ingests, filters, and publishes their detections and tracks to the rest of our system in a reliable, low-latency manner.
Performance Tuning: Tune radar parameters - waveform and mode selection, detection thresholds, CFAR, clutter maps, Doppler filtering, and track initiation/maintenance - to maximize probability of detection and minimize false alarms against small, fast sUAS in real-world environments.
Sensor Fusion Support: Work with the perception and controls teams to fuse radar tracks with acoustic and EO/IR data, and to cue our visual tracking and effectors from radar.
Testing & Validation: Build and execute test plans, including simulation, hardware-in-the-loop, and live-flight range testing with our UAS pilots, and establish metrics for detection range, track quality, latency, and false-alarm rate.
Field & Customer Support: Support radar setup, site surveys, and tuning during customer demonstrations, pilots, and field deployments, troubleshooting issues from the RF front end through the software stack.
Documentation: Produce and maintain integration documentation, interface control documents (ICDs), tuning guides, and test reports for internal teams and external partners.
Requirements
Radar Experience: 5+ years of hands-on experience as a radar engineer, radar systems engineer, or similar role, including work with more than one radar type or vendor.
Integration Track Record: Demonstrated experience integrating radars into larger systems (vehicles, fixed sites, C-UAS, air defense, autonomy, or similar) and taking that integration through to fielded use.
Tuning & Optimization: Proven experience tuning radar configuration and processing parameters to improve detection, tracking, and false-alarm performance in real-world clutter and interference.
Radar Fundamentals: Strong working knowledge of radar principles, including the radar range equation, RCS, Doppler processing, CFAR, clutter, multipath, and multi-target tracking (e.g., Kalman filtering, data association).
Programming & Tooling: Proficient in C++ and Python, with the ability to write production-quality code for radar data ingestion and processing on Linux.
Systems Troubleshooting: Comfortable diagnosing issues across RF
hardware, networking (TCP/UDP), timing, and software layers, and using lab equipment such as spectrum analyzers and oscilloscopes.
Independence & Ownership: Resourceful self-starter comfortable owning ambiguous sensor problems end-to-end and spending meaningful time on the range in a fast-moving startup environment.
Compliance: This position requires access to export-controlled information under ITAR. Only U.S. citizens are permitted. Must be willing to submit a background check.
Nice-to-Have
C-UAS Radar Experience: Hands-on experience with radars purpose-built for counter-drone or short-range air surveillance (e.g., Echodyne, Robin Radar, Blighter, RADA, or comparable systems).
Small-Target Detection: Experience detecting and classifying Group 1 sUAS, including micro-Doppler signatures and discrimination of drones from birds and ground clutter.
Signal Analysis Tools: Experience with MATLAB or NumPy/SciPy for radar signal and data analysis.
Sensor Fusion: Multi-modal fusion experience combining radar with EO/IR, acoustic, or RF sensors.
Embedded & Real-Time Systems: Experience with ROS/ROS 2, NVIDIA Jetson or other edge compute, FPGAs, or real-time signal processing pipelines.
Interoperability Standards: Familiarity with formats such as ASTERIX, Cursor-on-Target, or SAPIENT for sharing radar tracks with C2 systems.
Defense Industry Background: Experience in an ITAR or compliance-bound defense environment, or prior work at a defense contractor or with DoD customers.
Education: BS/MS in Electrical Engineering, Physics, or a related field with a focus on RF, signal processing, or radar.
Clearance: Active security clearance or eligibility to obtain one.
A passion for building robots or engineering projects as a hobby.
Benefits
Meaningful Early Equity: You aren’t just an employee; you are a foundational owner. Your contributions directly drive the value of your stake in the company.
Direct Roadmap Influence: Forget the bureaucracy of big defense. You will have a seat at the table, directly shaping our product and technology trajectory from day one.
Mission-Critical Work: We don’t build for "what if." We build systems the Department of War actively needs to counter immediate, real-world threats.
The Builder’s Playground: Work in a brand-new lab fully optimized for
rapid prototyping, equipped with NVIDIA Jetsons, high-end scopes, and 3-D printers.
100% Employer-Paid Premiums: We cover 100% of your medical, dental, and vision insurance premiums and cover 50% of healthcare premiums for your dependents.
Unlimited PTO: We value results, not clock-watching. Take the time you need to stay sharp and recharge.
Zero Red Tape: You have the autonomy to make technical decisions that would take months of committee approval at a larger firm.
Austin-Based Culture: Join an onsite team in Austin, TX, where we prioritize high-bandwidth collaboration and rapid field-testing.
Relocation Assistance: We want the best talent in the room. If you aren’t in Austin yet, we’ll help you get here, to make your transition to the Silicon Hills seamless.