Embedded Hardware / Firmware Engineer — SwarmNet Drone System

Photon-IV is a Canadian defence-tech company building the predictive layer where satellite and terrestrial networks meet.

Location: Waterloo / Cambridge, Ontario. Hybrid.

Eligibility: Canadian citizen strongly preferred. Our work touches controlled goods and Government of Canada programs, so you must be eligible for security screening and Controlled Goods enrollment.

Stage: Small team, real contracts, senior technical leads with prime and space experience working alongside early-career engineers. You will own things end to end.

The job: Build SwarmNet, our communications payload and mesh node, hardware and the firmware that runs on it.

SwarmNet turns distributed assets into a self-organizing network across terrestrial, satellite and node-to-node links, and reforms as topology changes. The SSN-P1 payload is designed to attach to third-party drone platforms. This role owns the physical node and its firmware: the board, the RF, the mesh behaviour, and the link that has to hold when fixed infrastructure is missing or degraded.

What you will do

• Design and bring up the SwarmNet node hardware: board design, RF front end, integration into a payload that mounts on third-party airframes.
• Write the firmware: neighbour discovery, relay election, adaptive links across terrestrial, satellite and node-to-node bearers, and secure node-to-node traffic.
• Build and test against real stress: jammer and GPS-deny scenarios, degraded topology, mesh reformation under load.
• Work with the software team so the same predictive engine extends to the links between nodes.

What you bring

• Real embedded hardware experience: schematic and board design, bring-up, and debugging hardware that has to work outside a lab.
• Firmware development in C / C++ on constrained targets, ideally with RF or wireless comms.
• Understanding of RF and wireless link design: modulation, link budgets, antennas, interference.
• You have shipped physical hardware that left the building and survived.

Nice to have

• Mesh networking, SDR, or tactical / resilient communications experience.
• Drone / UAS payload integration.
• Familiarity with encrypted, tamper-resistant comms.