SAR System Engineer

About the role

SAPPER INTELLIGENCE is seeking a hands‑on SAR System Engineer to design, implement, and optimise the software pipeline that converts raw radar impulses into high‑quality synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. You will work on airborne (UAV) payloads, collaborating closely with hardware engineers, algorithm specialists, and software developers in a small, founder‑led team.

Key responsibilities

• Design, assemble and test a UAV‑based ground‑penetrating SAR payload (GPSAR).
• Optimise raw radar returns (level‑0) for high‑quality SAR image processing.
• Develop, test and optimise imaging algorithms such as back‑projection, range‑Doppler, and Omega‑K.
• Build production‑ready processing frameworks that are reliable, scalable and suitable for real‑time or near‑real‑time operation.
• Implement motion compensation, time‑zero alignment, geometric spreading correction, background subtraction and other SAR‑specific corrections.
• Integrate the processing pipeline with RF hardware and platform teams to create a deployable payload.
• Ensure efficient use of GPU/CPU resources for high‑speed SAR image generation.
• Provide clean, high‑quality SAR data outputs for AI‑driven detection and classification tasks.

Required profile

• Strong knowledge of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and experience with end‑to‑end system design on airborne platforms.
• Proven experience in SAR image formation algorithms and processing pipelines.
• Hands‑on software development experience in Python, C++ and/or CUDA (GPU acceleration a plus).
• Experience with SAR payloads for UAVs, aircraft or satellites.
• Solid understanding of radar systems, RF fundamentals and signal processing.

Required skills

• Python
• C++
• CUDA
• GPU acceleration
• Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)
• SAR image formation algorithms
• Radar systems
• RF fundamentals
• Signal processing
• Motion compensation
• Calibration
• UAV platforms