He spent his Fulbright year at the University of Oslo and then joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech, where he researched military and space communications.

Today, millions of cordless and cellular phones employ pseudorandom direct-sequence spread spectrum implemented with shift register sequences.

He also contributed a puzzle to each issue of the Johns Hopkins Magazine, a monthly publication of his undergraduate alma mater, for a column called "Golomb's Gambits", and was a frequent contributor to Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics.

[9] He was singled out as a major figure of coding and information theory for over four decades, specifically for his ability to apply advanced mathematics to problems in digital communications.

[13] In 2016, he was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering "for pioneering work in space communications and the design of digital spread spectrum signals, transmissions that provide security, interference suppression, and precise location for cryptography; missile guidance; defense, space, and cellular communications; radar; sonar; and GPS.