Senior Data Scientist – Payload & SAT-RAN

AST SpaceMobile and our global partners are building the first and only space-based cellular broadband network to be accessible by standard smartphones. Called SpaceMobile, this ultra-powerful network is being designed to provide connectivity at 4G/5G speeds everywhere on the planet – on land, at sea and in flight.

Position Overview

The Senior Data Scientist – Payload & SAT-RAN defines, builds, and operationalizes SAT-RAN data models across Payload, Gateway (GW), and Cellular/RAN subsystems. This role focuses on creating robust telemetry-driven models and metrics that quantify system performance, detect and prevent failures and anomalies, and enable data-driven optimization of user experience, capacity, and duty cycle under various ground and in-orbit constraints. This person works closely with payload engineering, gateway/network engineering, RAN/system architects, and operations to translate complex, multi-domain data into actionable insights and production-grade analytics.

Key Responsibilities

• Own Payload/GW/SAT-RAN data strategy: define key subsystem metrics, data sources, and collection requirements spanning payload, gateway, transport, and RAN/service layers.
• Design and maintain SAT-RAN subsystem data models (entities, relationships, identifiers, etc.) to unify telemetry across domains and support scalable analytics.
• Lead data model definition and deployment into production systems, including instrumentation requirements, pipeline design, validation, versioning, and data quality monitoring.
• Develop performance analytics for end-to-end Satellite–RAN performance projected across multiple subsystems, including attribution of impact across payload, GW, transport, core, and RAN layers.
• Build failure/anomaly detection and prevention systems using multivariate time-series, correlation/causality-informed approaches, topology/context-aware features, and alert deduplication/triage scoring.
• Create qualitative quality scoring models that combine predictive signals with measured KPIs/KQIs, including confidence/uncertainty measures.
• Develop fleet service scheduling models linking orbital state/visibility, predicted SAT-RAN capacity and quality, interference, and spacecraft power/thermal constraints to achievable service performance and demand fulfillment.
• Build decision-support data products: dashboards, health scores, early-warning indicators, incident enrichment, and executive-ready reporting for SAT-RAN performance.
• Partner with engineering teams to define success metrics, run backtesting/regression evaluation, and operationalize models into workflows such as assurance, release validation, and optimization loops.
• Establish best practices for reproducibility and MLOps, including model monitoring, drift detection, dataset/version governance, and documentation.

Qualifications

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Statistics, Mathematics, Physics, or a related technical field, or equivalent experience.

Experience

• 5+ years of experience delivering data science/ML solutions in production, including monitoring, anomaly detection, forecasting, quality scoring, or optimization support.
• Strong proficiency in Python (pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn, and time-series tooling) and strong SQL skills.
• Demonstrated experience defining and operating data models and analytics pipelines, including schemas, identifiers, aggregation logic, data validation, and lineage.
• Strong statistical foundations, including model evaluation, uncertainty, time-series behavior, bias/variance, and backtesting.
• Ability to translate cross-domain system problems into measurable metrics and deployable analytics.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with multivariate anomaly detection at scale, including change-point detection, sequence models where justified, and graph/topology-aware features.
• Telecom/systems experience, including LTE/5G KPIs/KQIs, OSS counters/alarms, QoE/QoS metrics, and RAN performance indicators.
• Familiarity with scheduling/capacity modeling concepts, including resource allocation, interference-aware capacity, constraint modeling, and power/thermal-limited regimes.
• MLOps experience, including deployment, monitoring, drift detection, and CI/CD for data and models.

Soft Skills

Technology Stack

• Python, including pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn, and time-series analysis libraries.
• SQL and relational/analytics data stores.
• Multivariate time-series and anomaly/change-point detection frameworks.
• Telemetry, OSS counters/alarms, and KPI/KQI data pipelines.
• MLOps tooling for model monitoring, drift detection, versioning, and CI/CD.
• Dashboarding and reporting platforms for health scores and executive-facing analytics.

Physical Requirements

• Ability to lift up to 25 lbs.
• Ability to use a computer for extended periods.
• Ability to work in a standard office environment.
• Ability to travel occasionally to support cross-team collaboration or reviews with engineering and operations teams as needed.

This job description may not be inclusive to the duties and responsibilities listed. Additional tasks may be assigned to the employee from time to time or the scope of the job may change as needed by business demands.

AST SpaceMobile is an Equal Opportunity, at will Employer; employment is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.