Physics Engineer Jobs in Rochester, NY (NOW HIRING)

Company Overview
Metrea delivers effects-as-a-service to national security partners across five domains and more than a dozen mission areas. These include airborne ISR, electronic warfare, secure communications, aerial refueling, special air missions, aerial firefighting, and advanced simulation. We own the whole stack: designing, building, and operating turnkey capabilities that give our partners decisive, asymmetric advantage against rapidly evolving threats.
Our operating model is built around three interlocking pillars. The Support Groups provide a global shared-service - spanning people, finance, platform, operations, legal, and engagement. This frees up our Core Groups, who develop and own mission capabilities end-to-end, to focus entirely on delivery. The Market Groups apply a regional lens, ensuring that our agile and adaptable capabilities remain aligned to the wicked problems that matter most to our partners across the Americas, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific.
At the heart of our model is a simple but powerful idea: be a true partner with skin in the game. Our partners need effects, not just equipment. By owning the full stack - from the lab to the field - we are able to drive a continuous cycle of innovation that keeps our partners ahead. It's a fast-moving, intellectually demanding environment where talented people are given real responsibility, work on problems that matter, and contribute to an enterprise that is growing quickly and deliberately.
Headquartered in Washington, DC, with facilities across the United States, the United Kingdom, as well as Continental Europe and Asia-Pacific.
Group Overview
Electromagnetic and Cyber Group (EM&C) is responsible for developing flexible and survivable advanced electronic warfare and secure communications equipment while providing the industry's leading signals intelligence, electronic warfare, and cyber experts. Metrea specializes in signal classification, direction finding, advanced geolocation techniques, and waveform development including waveforms for MANET and LPI/LPD applications. Metrea also develops special purpose radios for government customers and licenses DF and geolocation solutions to multiple OEMs. Within EM&C, RADLAB is our radar capability area. RADLAB is a small team building novel capabilities from the ground up, taking ideas from physics and math through simulation, prototype, and test.
Capability Area:
The Electromagnetic and Cyber Group (EM&C) inside Metrea develops and builds systems for communications, RF sensing, and electromagnetic effects. Within EM&C, the Radar Lab (RADLAB) turns advanced integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) concepts into working systems. Staffed and organized around a Bell Labs model, RADLAB's work starts from fundamental first-principles physics and applied mathematics: deriving signal models, algorithms, and performance predictions, then carrying them through simulation, prototype, hardware test, and mission application. Our research is driven by real operational problems. The work has to result in hardware that gets built and measured, but there is time and space to do the science and engineering right, and because the team is small and hands-on, our scientists and engineers stay close to the ideas they develop and the systems they build. Good ideas are welcome from anywhere on the team, but they have to connect back to capability someone needs.
Position Summary
RADLAB is looking for a Principal Radar Software Engineer to own the core software platform that powers our radar, communications, and RF sensing R&D. This is a hands-on systems programming role: you will own the shared C++ codebase, RADLAB CORE, that the rest of the team builds on. Your job is to make it fast, clean, reusable, and ready to deploy, starting from simulation workstations all the way to prototype hardware. You will work alongside domain engineers who own the signal processing algorithms, transceiver models, and environment simulations. Your job is to give them a platform where their code runs at peak performance, integrates cleanly, and can be tested and deployed with confidence. You will also work with our prototyping lead to ensure RADLAB CORE connects cleanly to RF hardware and test equipment, thereby owning the software side of that interface.
What You'll Do

• Own the RADLAB CORE repository: its architecture, module structure, build system, and dependency management. Design reusable, composable frameworks that let domain engineers plug in new algorithms without fighting the plumbing.
• Architect software infrastructure for waveforms, signal processing chains, and simulation models that don't exist yet in fielded systems. The platform has to accommodate research that is still evolving.
• Profile and optimize computationally intensive signal processing and simulation pipelines. Identify bottlenecks, numerical stability issues, and optimization opportunities. Make the hot paths as fast as the hardware allows through cache-aware data layout, SIMD, concurrency, and GPU offload where appropriate.
• Own the CI/CD pipeline, automated testing infrastructure, static analysis, and release process. Ensure the repo is always buildable, testable, and deployable.
• Partner with domain engineers in translating their algorithms into correct, maintainable, performant C++ that integrates cleanly with the rest of RADLAB CORE.
• Build the tooling and harnesses that make simulation campaigns (Monte Carlo sweeps, sensitivity analyses) repeatable and automated.
• Work with the prototyping lead to ensure RADLAB CORE interfaces cleanly with RF hardware and test equipment. Own the software side of that boundary: data protocols, device interfaces, and any lab-facing control tools.
• Contribute to technical documentation, including build and architecture guides, API references, and test result summaries.

What You Bring

• BS, MS or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Physics, or a related field.
• 10+ years of professional experience writing performance-critical C/C++ in a numerical, scientific, or signal processing context. Equivalent depth through other kinds of applied engineering work will also be considered.
• Comfort building software infrastructure for a research team whose requirements evolve as the science does. The platform has to be stable and fast, but also flexible enough that a new algorithm or a new piece of hardware doesn't require a rewrite.
• Demonstrated experience designing and maintaining shared codebases, libraries, or frameworks that other engineers build on.
• Experience with performance optimization of numerical C/C++ code: multithreading, concurrency, SIMD, cache-aware data layout, and profiling-driven optimization
• Proficiency in Python for test automation, validation scripting, data analysis, and visualization.
• Practical experience with CI/CD for C++ projects: build systems (CMake), package management, automated testing, static analysis, containerized builds.
• Ability to read and work within a signal processing or numerical codebase without needing to be the domain expert. You can follow algorithmic flow well enough to profile it, test it, and optimize it.
• Software engineering discipline: version control, code review, documentation, and testing.
• Clear technical writing and the ability to communicate architecture decisions, performance tradeoffs, and test results.

Preferred Qualifications

• Signal processing, radar, or RF experience is a plus, not a prerequisite. If you have built or governed high-performance computational systems in an adjacent domain and want to learn radar, we want to talk to you.

• GPU programming (CUDA or ROCm) or demonstrated readiness to develop GPU skills. This is a growth area for the role, and you will have the opportunity to go deep.

• GUI development (Qt or similar) for lab or test tools.

• Experience interfacing with SDRs, DAQs, or RF test equipment at the software level.

• Familiarity with real-time, embedded, or hardware-in-the-loop deployment targets.

• FPGA experience. HLS (C++-based) is sufficient; RTL is not required.

• An MS or PhD with research in a computationally intensive domain who wants to finally do the software right.

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical plan options
• HSA/FSA accounts
• Dental and vision coverage
• 6% employer 401(k) match
• Fully paid parental leave for all new parents
• Generous PTO
• Life and disability insurance
• Long-term and Short-term disability coverage
• AD&D Coverage
• Pet Insurance
• Employee Assistance Program
• Subsided gym membership / plans through Wellhub

Work Authorization / Security Clearance

• Must be a U.S. citizen
• This position requires eligibility to obtain a TS clearance. U.S. citizenship is required. Candidates will be subject to a background investigation in accordance with federal requirements

AAP/EEO Statement
Metrea Advanced Signals LLC is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status or other characteristics protected by law.
Position Type and Expected Hours of Work
This is a full-time exempt position with typical working hours of Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Hours and work shifts may change in accordance with department and business needs.
Work Environment
This job operates in an office setting.
Travel
<5%
Base Pay Range
The compensation range shown below is a good faith estimate and reflects the expected base pay for this position upon hire. This is just one component of Metrea's overall approach to total rewards and final compensation decisions, including the ultimate salary or hourly rate agreed upon, may vary depending on factors such as job location, job-specific knowledge, skills, experience, and the overall negotiated compensation package. Eligible full-time employees also receive a comprehensive benefits package designed to support their health, wellbeing, and long-term success.
Pay Range
$150,000-$185,000 USD
Our Firmware
At Metrea, our single core value is Rooted in Humility, and our four cornerstone attributes are Entrepreneurial, Systematic, Discerning, and Over-Deliver. These form what we call our Teammate Firmware. Just like technical firmware connects software and hardware, our Firmware is the constant interface between our mission and our people. It defines how we show up, how we work together, and how we solve complex problems.
Our team Firmware creates a web-like, hyper-collaborative, dynamically hierarchical way of working that helps us adapt quickly, communicate openly, and distribute decision-making to where expertise actually lives. It enables groups to self-organize around hard problems, shift fluidly as priorities evolve, and operate with the trust, curiosity, and discipline required in a complex mission space. This foundation allows us to deliver elegant, effective solutions and uphold our purpose: protecting our precious inheritance.