The Telecom Talent Gap Threatening the Satellite Boom

Viasat is hiring 5G Devices Hardware Engineers across multiple locations right now. The European Space Agency is funding Viasat's direct-to-device non-terrestrial network platform under its ARTES 4.0 program, with partners like Filtronic delivering the high-power RF systems needed for feeder links on an open-architecture LEO network. Job boards are full of RF engineering and satellite systems postings tied to 5G NTN.

That's the visible part. The invisible part is what these job descriptions are actually asking for, and it's a combination that barely existed as a single skill set five years ago.

Standard 5G radio access network engineering assumes a fixed base station and a mostly stationary link budget. Direct-to-device satellite connectivity assumes the opposite: a moving transmitter thousands of kilometers away, round-trip latency that has to be compensated at multiple layers of the 5G NR stack, and RF impairments that don't show up in any terrestrial deployment guide. Mitigating these impairments at the user equipment and the gNB is, per the engineering literature on this, a genuinely distinct technical problem — not a harder version of the same problem.

Most RAN engineers have never touched a link budget for a moving satellite. Most satellite and orbital mechanics specialists have never opened a 3GPP spec. Historically, these were two separate career tracks that rarely intersected. Direct-to-device connectivity requires both, in the same engineer or the same small team, and that combination is thin on the ground.

This matters beyond Viasat's hiring pipeline. Every operator now watching Amazon commit satellites to direct-to-device, and watching SpaceX build hybrid networks, needs the same intersectional skill set to evaluate, negotiate, or compete against those moves. The market is scaling capital commitments faster than either training pipeline — RAN or satellite — can produce qualified people. That's a classic setup for a skill premium: not because the work is glamorous, but because the number of people who can do both halves of it is small and the number of companies bidding for them just went up.

For engineers already deep in 5G or 6G work, this is a legitimate reskilling opportunity, not a hype cycle. For companies building direct-to-device strategy, it's a planning problem that shows up on the org chart before it shows up on the balance sheet. Hiring managers should be asking whether their technical leadership actually has this hybrid background, or whether they're assuming a RAN engineer can pick up orbital mechanics as a side project.

The scarcest skill in a hot market is rarely the deepest one in either discipline. It's the one sitting at the seam between two deep ones. Where is your organization sourcing that seam?

Sources: Viasat careers, ESA 5G-GOA project, Microwave Journal

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