Internship : Radio & Satellite Communications Engineering Intern

We're hiring a Radio & SatCom Engineering Intern to build, end-to-end, a permanent amateur radio and satellite communications ground station at our Bengaluru R&D lab. Not simulate it. Not design it on paper. Build it. Masts, coax, dishes, DIY feeds, SDRs, the rooftop compute, the indoor shack, the rotor integration, the lightning protection all of it. From clean terrace to first decoded full-disk image.

This is an internship for someone who'd otherwise be doing exactly this on their own terrace with their own money on weekends, and would love to do it instead in a real R&D facility with budget, mentorship, equipment, and a 70-strong community of fellow makers.

What will you be working on

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You will execute the full build of an HF + VHF + UHF + L-band ground station from a clean Bengaluru rooftop. The design is documented in a 50+ page field manual you'll read on day one your job is to make it real.

HF DX (1.830 MHz): DIY end-fed half-wave from the mast to the parapet, IC-705 over USB CAT, WSJT-X / FT8 / FT4, Cloudlog with auto-upload to LoTW / eQSL / QRZ. First DX QSOs logged from the station within the first month.

VHF / UHF local nets: dual-band base vertical, repeater + simplex operation, CHIRP programming for HTs.

LEO amateur satellites & ISS: Arrow II cross-Yagi on a DIY AntRunner-Pro Az-El rotor, GPredict + Hamlib rotctld / rigctld integration, Doppler-corrected operation on V/U, U/V, FM birds, linear transponders (RS-44), GreenCube IO-117 digipeater, ISS APRS digipeater (145.825), ISS cross-band repeater (145.99 / 437.800), occasional SSTV captures.

LEO weather: 137 MHz Quadrifilar Helix you'll build yourself, raspberry-noaa-v2 on a Raspberry Pi 5 (8 GB), NOAA-15/18/19 APT + Meteor M2 LRPT decoding 24/7.

GEO weather the centrepiece: two 80 cm offset dishes, two SatDump live instances, two custom DIY L-band feeds.

• Elektro-L No. 5 at 76E 74.7 elevation from our latitude (12.91N), nearly overhead. Primary target. Custom near-zenith mount required.
• GK-2A at 128.2E 30.8 elevation, secondary. LRIT 1692.14 MHz, decryption keys public.
• FY-4B at 133E 25.8 elevation, opportunistic.
• DIY L-band feeds: you'll prototype, build, and tune at least two of: 3-turn axial-mode helix (RHCP), cantenna, biquad. Bench-test on a NanoVNA. Mount on the dish. Get first light.
• SAWbird+ GOES LNAs at the feeds, RTL-SDR V3 chain, SatDump live pipelines as systemd services, decoded products archived to NAS.

Two-brain architecture: Pi 5 outdoors in a custom IP66 enclosure with active cooling, NVMe SSD, PoE+ HAT running all 24/7 unattended capture (noaa-v2 + 2 SatDump live). Mini-PC indoors handles the interactive shack: GPredict, IC-705, WSJT-X, gqrx / SDR++, Cloudlog. Single PoE+ Ethernet cable carries data + power to the rooftop.

Six antennas, one terrace: central mast with rotor, two fixed L-band dish mounts (one of them near-zenith that's an interesting custom-bracket problem), 137 MHz QFH on a low pole, dual-band V/U vertical, HF wire. Plan once, install once.

Lightning, grounding, weatherproofing: single-point ground bus at shack entry, gas-discharge arrestors on every coax, monsoon-grade cable seals, IP-rated cable glands, drip loops, 6 mm copper to ground rod at mast base. This gets done properly because Bengaluru sees ~50 thunderstorm-days a year.

Stage 2 Radio Astronomy (low priority, time-permitting): scaffolding for a future hydrogen-line setup. Provisioning a feedline for a future 1.5 m parabolic dish at 1420.4 MHz, GNU Radio total-power flowgraph, first H-line drift scan if you have time. Pulsars, SETI, sun monitoring entry path only; full builds are post-internship.

Internship duration & what success looks like

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36 months total. Core station build targeted at 58 weeks. Remainder spent operating, characterising, refining, documenting, and (if time allows) starting Stage 2.

By the end you will have:

• A working multi-mission ground station with first decoded full-disk imagery from at least one geostationary satellite (Elektro-L 5 expected primary)
• First HF DX QSOs logged into Cloudlog from the station
• DIY feed antennas you've built, NanoVNA-characterised, and mounted on the dishes
• A complete operations runbook
• A hands-on workshop course you've delivered to GiftdMinds students

Who we're looking for

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MUST HAVE:

• Indian licensed ham radio operator strongly preferred VU2 / VU3 callsign, ASOC. If you have equivalent practical experience and can clear the WPC exam during the internship, write to us anyway.
• You've actually built antennas wire dipoles, Yagis, QFHs, helicals, biquads, J-poles, magnetic loops pick at least three you've physically constructed. Not simulated. Not designed only.
• You've run a complete RF chain end-to-end: antenna LNA filter coax SDR decoder, with bias-T powering. You know what insertion loss is, you've measured SWR with a NanoVNA, you've fixed an SMA solder joint that wasn't working.
• Linux on real deployments, not just a Pi tutorial. systemd services, networking, NVMe, journalctl, SSH-from-mobile.
• SatDump, GPredict, Hamlib, raspberry-noaa-v2, GNU Radio comfortable user level minimum. Contributors get bonus points.
• Mechanical aptitude fabricate a mast bracket, design a 3D-printed feed support, climb a ladder with a torque wrench, weatherproof a rooftop enclosure.
• Comfortable on a rooftop in 40C summer heat or July monsoon. This is hands-on work in real weather.

Single Biggest Filter

Show us something you've built. A photo of your homebrew QFH on your terrace, or a cantenna with a NanoVNA SWR sweep, or your DIY rotator on a balcony beats a 100-page EM simulation report every time. If your entire portfolio is HFSS / 4NEC2 / CST screenshots, this isn't the right internship for you. We have nothing against simulation; we just need someone who has crossed the gap from CAD to copper.

BONUS (nice to have)

• Pluto SDR / USRP / HackRF experience beyond the basics
• GNU Radio flowgraph development for radio astronomy or weak-signal work
• Receivable images from GOES / GK-2A / Elektro-L / Meteor M2 visible on your QRZ page or socials
• DIY rotator builds (AntRunner, SatNOGS, custom)
• IP66 enclosure design experience conformal coating, cable glands, breather vents, sun shields
• Comfort presenting technical material to 10-to-15-year-olds (you will teach a workshop)
• ITU band plan + Indian WPC compliance fluency

What You Get

• Paid internship (rate negotiated individually based on experience and license class)
• Full equipment access: ICOM IC-705, multiple SDRs (RTL-SDR V3, Airspy R2/Mini, HackRF One, Nooelec), Raspberry Pi 5, mini-PC, oscilloscope, spectrum analyser, NanoVNA, professional soldering station, full FDM 3D printing + laser cutting, complete RF lab
• Project budget for parts, materials, dishes, feeds, cable, connectors agreed at start
• Real ownership of the project end-to-end not making slides about someone else's work
• Mentorship from the GiftdMinds engineering team (RF, embedded, mechanical, software)
• Operate from the station under our club callsign once licensed and integrated
• Access to and influence on our other R&D projects there's a sounding rocket that needs a telemetry chain, a UUV that needs a sub-surface comms link. Finish the ground station early and there's more.

About GiftdMinds

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We're a NASSCOM Center of Excellence-recognised product R&D startup based in Bengaluru. Our engineers ship hardware products on weekdays. On weekends, we run one of India's most ambitious hands-on engineering programs for 10-to-15-year-olds who already match the practical skills of fresh engineering graduates. One of our 12-year-olds has filed a patent. A 9-year-old is building a food-freshness sensor. 40+ kids took the stage at our last Demo Day in front of 300+ people.

Inside the lab we run several deep R&D builds in parallel:

1. In-house 3D printer with swappable laser-cutter rig
2. 12" collapsible Dobsonian telescope with automated star tracker
3. RC plane with FPV + head-tracking camera control
4. Autonomous UUV (submarine) and swarm UAVs
5. A BDX-style bipedal robot
6. A 10-km apogee solid-motor sounding rocket (COTS + SRAD)
7. A complete amateur radio and satellite communications base station this is you

How To Apply:

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Send your resume to hr@giftdminds.com

• Your CV (one page is fine)
• Your callsign and license class (or current status)
• 3 photographs of antennas / RF projects / rooftop installations you have built personally with a one-line caption each
• Your QRZ page / GitHub / blog / YouTube / Instagram whatever shows your work
• One paragraph on why you want this specifically not why you want "an internship in general"