Staff Network Reliability Engineer (RAN Operations)

The world still has coverage blind spots. You could help eliminate them at Skylo.

Skylo has pioneered a standards-based approach to satellite connectivity. We connect smartphones and IoT devices directly to satellites. No special hardware, no entirely new networks. Just billions of existing devices, suddenly reachable anywhere on Earth. We're not building toward this future. We're already in it.

Our direct-to-device service is live on millions of activated devices across five continents, covering more than 72 million square kilometers, in partnership with leading satellite operators, mobile network operators, Tier-1 chipset makers, and OEMs worldwide. And we're just getting started.

At the heart of it all is Skylo's commercial NTN vRAN: a 3GPP standards-based, cloud-native platform that seamlessly bridges terrestrial and satellite networks. It's the infrastructure that makes true anywhere, anytime connectivity possible.

When you join Skylo, you'll work at the intersection of three markets reshaping how the world stays connected: mass-market consumer devices, automotive, and industrial IoT. Enabling people outdoors and critical workflows in the world's most remote places.

This is a rare chance to work on technology that matters, at a company that's already proving it works

How You Will Impact Skylo

As a Staff Network Reliability Engineer, RAN Operations, in the Global Product Support & Customer Success organization, you are the RAN domain authority within Skylo's production NTN network. Where the Incident Manager coordinates the bridge, you own the RF and RAN technical outcome. You are the escalation target for every RAN-domain Sev 1–2 event — the engineer who diagnoses SINR anomalies, beam coverage gaps, preamble failures, timing drift, interference conditions, and gNodeB/eNodeB hardware faults at a signal and protocol level, and delivers a resolution or a definitive root cause.

On a satellite network, the RAN layer is the air interface between space and device. Every attach, every random-access attempt, every RRC connection depends on the health of Skylo's NTN vRAN. You own that health — 24×7. You define service-aligned KPIs (not vendor-default counters), lead continuous RF optimization, write and own the runbooks, set the detection logic and diagnostic standards the entire team operates against, and surface toil and failure patterns as engineering requirements.

At Staff NRE level you are also a force multiplier: mentoring Senior NREs in RAN domain depth, contributing to the automation backlog with operational requirements, and partnering with RAN Product Engineering to ensure new software releases and parameter changes meet operational readiness standards before they reach production.

Key Responsibilities

RAN Network Operations & Health Ownership

• Own 24×7 NTN RAN health across Skylo's production network: gNodeB/eNodeB status, node availability, attach and access success rates, RRC setup and abnormal release behavior, RF integrity (SINR, RSSI, noise floor stability), and RAN-layer SLA compliance.

• Monitor and triage RAN alarms using OSS dashboards, Grafana/inhouse telemetry, and NTN-specific alarm patterns — distinguish transient RF fluctuations from systemic degradation before escalating or acting.

• Execute and own RAN-domain runbooks for all fault categories: cell outage recovery, timing resynchronization, parameter rollback, restart procedures, and interference mitigation actions — without requiring engineering team involvement for covered fault classes.

• Own timing and synchronization health: GNSS lock status, Octoclock/reference clock drift, PTP/SyncE alignment, and NTN-specific timing compensation — detect and resolve timing anomalies before they cascade into access failures.

• Monitor beam-level and cell-level performance across the NTN coverage area; identify underperforming beams and initiate optimization or escalation based on defined criteria.

RAN Incident Diagnosis & Escalation Authority

• Serve as the L3 escalation authority for all RAN-domain incidents: take ownership from the Incident Manager, diagnose at the RF and protocol level using eNodeB/gNodeB logs, RF telemetry, PRACH/MSG1–MSG5 analysis, RRC traces, and KPI correlation, and deliver a resolution or a decision-grade root cause.

• Lead RAN-domain troubleshooting bridges: command the technical investigation, direct vendor and engineering participants, correlate signals across RU, DU, CU-CP, CU-UP, and timing subsystems, and drive the bridge to a documented resolution or a clear engineering handoff.

• Diagnose and resolve RAN failure modes: SINR anomalies, beam coverage gaps, preamble failures (MSG1–MSG5), RRC setup failures, abnormal RRC releases, CW/narrowband/adjacent-carrier interference, cell unavailability, eCPRI link failures, and DU/CU software faults.

• Engage RAN vendors with technical specificity: reproduce failures with log evidence and RF traces, own the vendor ticket lifecycle, enforce SLA response commitments, and escalate vendor delays with full impact context.

• Participate in the global 24×7 on-call rotation as the RAN domain escalation tier — reachable within defined SLA windows for Sev 1 events; function as the technical decision-maker, not the first responder.

Root Cause Analysis & Post-Incident Ownership

• Own RAN-domain RCA end-to-end: lead the post-incident investigation, document the complete causal chain from triggering RF condition or hardware event through downstream subscriber impact, and deliver systemic action items with owners, timelines, and measurable success criteria.

• Deliver Initial RCA documentation within defined SLA windows post-incident closure; own the final RCA through engineering review and sign-off.

• Identify systemic RAN failure patterns — recurring interference sources, timing drift trends, vendor software regressions, hardware batch faults — and translate them into engineering requirements with clear impact, scope, and acceptance criteria.

• Contribute to the weekly and monthly Network Performance Report: RAN availability by beam/cell, attach success rates, MTTR by fault category, top recurring issues, and SLA deviation analysis.

RAN KPI Ownership & Performance Optimization

• Define, implement, and continuously refine RAN KPIs: attach and access success rates, RRC setup and release behavior, SINR/RSSI distributions, interference metrics (CW, narrowband, adjacent carrier), MSG5 preamble success rates, timing health indicators, and chronic degradation tracking — calibrated to Skylo's NTN behavior, not vendor-default counters.

• Lead continuous optimization of Skylo's live NTN RAN: parameter tuning for NTN-specific behavior, beam-level and cell-level performance optimization, coverage improvements, and interference mitigation.

• Proactively track RAN availability and performance metrics against MNO SLA commitments — flag degradation trends before they breach thresholds and initiate preventive optimization before a subscriber impact occurs.

• Partner with Change Management to ensure safe execution of all RAN configuration changes: auditable change records, peer review gates, and explicit rollback plans for every optimization action.

Runbook Authorship & Operational Standards

• Author, own, and maintain all RAN-domain runbooks and SOPs — every procedure tested before production reliance; runbooks are living documents updated after every incident that reveals a gap.

• Define the diagnostic decision tree for each known RAN fault class: entry condition, RF triage steps, isolation method, resolution action, and escalation criteria — written at the level where a Senior NRE can execute independently.

• Translate RAN behavior into operational artifacts that scale: detection logic, alert threshold definitions, escalation criteria — ensuring the team can detect, triage, and escalate RAN events accurately without your direct involvement.

• Identify runbook gaps from incident post-mortems and operational observations; prioritize gap closure based on incident frequency, subscriber impact, and MTTR.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Team Development

• Partner with RAN Product Engineering on software release readiness: define observability and operational acceptance criteria for new RAN builds before they reach production; flag missing alarm coverage, changed default parameters, and new failure modes.

• Collaborate with Core NRE on end-to-end subscriber path issues where RAN and Core domains intersect: attach failures, handover interruptions, and signaling chain problems that span domains.

• Collaborate with Cloud Infrastructure NRE on Kubernetes-layer issues affecting RAN NFs: DU/CU pod scheduling, PVC availability, network policy changes, and GKE upgrade impacts on RAN workloads.

• Surface toil and automation opportunities to the Service Assurance & Automation team — document the procedure, frequency, and MTTR cost as structured input to the automation backlog; contribute to closed-loop automation requirements for P3/P4 RAN events.

• Mentor Senior NREs in RAN domain depth: KPI interpretation, RF pattern recognition, trace analysis (PCAP, gNB traces), early degradation indicators, and escalation judgment.

Vendor Management & Engineering Interface

• Work closely with RAN vendors for incident resolution and RCA — manage vendor ticket lifecycle from opening through closure, ensure reproducible evidence including RF traces and gNB logs is provided, and escalate responsiveness failures.

• Engage Skylo's RAN engineering team with full operational context when issues exceed operational resolution authority — deliver a structured problem statement, timeline, log bundle with RF telemetry, and a clear question rather than a vague escalation.

• Support MNO partner technical discussions on RAN-layer SLA definitions, coverage performance, and NTN-specific RF behavior — provide operational evidence and data to support partner conversations.

Qualifications

Required

• 8–10+ years of experience in RAN engineering and operations in a production 24×7 environment — carrier or vendor side, with direct ownership of live LTE/5G RAN infrastructure. NTN or satellite RAN experience strongly preferred.

• Deep 3GPP RAN expertise: TS 38.300, NR/LTE-NTN procedures, NB-IoT/LTE-M/5G-NR air interfaces, UE random-access procedures (PRACH/MSG1–MSG5), RRC state machine, and beam management.

• Extensive understanding of vRAN/ORAN architecture: 7-2x split functions, RU/DU/CU-CP/CU-UP component roles, eCPRI/CPRI interfaces, and virtualized RAN software systems.

• Production RAN troubleshooting: demonstrated ability to diagnose SINR anomalies, beam coverage gaps, preamble failures, timing drift, interference conditions (CW, narrowband, adjacent carrier), and RU/DU/CU hardware and software faults using RF telemetry and gNB logs.

• RF and timing domain knowledge: GNSS, PTP, SyncE, Octoclock/reference clock behavior, and NTN-specific timing compensation mechanisms.

• Production observability: Prometheus/Grafana/in house tools for RAN KPI dashboarding; OSS alarm integration (SNMP, Pub/Sub, or equivalent).

• Packet capture and trace analysis: proficiency with Wireshark or equivalent for L2/L3 call flows, PCAP analysis, and gNB trace decoding.

• Kubernetes operational literacy: pod health monitoring for DU/CU workloads, kubectl proficiency, log aggregation and correlation.

• Runbook authorship: ability to write RAN diagnostic procedures at the level where a less-experienced engineer can execute them independently.

• Strong written and verbal communication: capable of delivering RCA documents, engineering escalations, and MNO-facing technical summaries.

Preferred

• Direct experience with NTN or satellite RAN operations: NTN-specific random-access timing, satellite beam management, and coverage optimization over LEO/GEO constellations.

• RF design, optimization, and performance improvement experience — parameter tuning, coverage analysis, interference hunting.

• Experience with RAN vendors: Samsung, Mavenir, Fujitsu, Nokia — including vendor CLI tools, log formats, counter definitions, and support escalation processes.

• Deep understanding of LTE, VoLTE, 5G VoNR L2/L3 call flows with ability to analyze traces.

• Scripting ability in Python or Bash — sufficient to automate RF log parsing, KPI extraction, or build diagnostic utilities.

• Experience contributing to closed-loop automation requirements or service assurance platform development for RAN event categories.

• Knowledge of cloud-native environments (GKE, AWS) hosting virtualized RAN functions.

What We Offer

With employees working across three continents, Skylo is proud to be an equal opportunity employer dedicated to building an inclusive and diverse workforce. Our worldwide culture encourages a flexible approach to work, and we offer an attractive range of benefits:

• Competitive compensation packages including a stock option-based equity program

• Comprehensive benefits including medical, dental, vision, and retirement plan

• Monthly allowances for wellness and education reimbursement

• A generous time-off policy, holidays, and the opportunity to temporarily work abroad

• A once-in-a-career opportunity to operate the world's first commercial, live direct-to-device satellite network

• Access to a world-class team across software, hardware, chipsets, telecom, satellite, and network virtualization

• Open, transparent, inclusive culture that blends Silicon Valley, Nordic, and South Asia characteristics

EEO Statement

Skylo is an equal-opportunity employer and we celebrate diversity. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, parent or caregiver status, political affiliation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws.

We are also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. Please let us know if you need assistance or accommodation due to a disability.