RF Engineer (High Power Space Antenna)The Radiofrequency (RF) Engineer is responsible for designing, building, testing, and managing a state-of-the-art satellite RF payload system for secure and jam-resistant communications. You will be a cradle-to-grave owner of hardware that will fly in space and will perform trade studies, select and manage vendors, design RF and antenna hardware, test, and guide your system through production readiness. At the end of three years, you will have flown cutting-edge hardware in space that will be critical for providing best-in-the-world resilient and secure communications for enterprise and government customers.
You should be prepared to work and thrive in a fast moving environment where you are comfortable taking vague design ideas and turning them into tangible hardware ready for test and flight. We are seeking engineers who love to solve hard problems! Must be comfortable working with high performers at a fast pace to solve these hard problems.
Responsibilities- Responsible for an entire RF payload subsystem and overall hardware implementation of the space side of a link budget. Map requirements to realizable spaceflight-worthy hardware including, but not limited to: finding commercial-off-the-shelf parts, specifying and working with partners to build custom parts, and/or designing custom hardware in-house
- Cradle-to-grave ownership of space hardware: perform trade studies, select and manage vendors, design RF and antenna hardware, perform validation tests, and guide your system through production readiness
- Design, manage, analyze, fabricate, test and/or measure RF and millimeter wave hardware including, but not limited to: antennas, waveguide, transmission lines, filters, power amplifiers, upconverters, mixers, and local oscillators
- Establish and manage qualification and acceptance test campaigns for space environments (vibration, thermal, TVAC, radiation) per standards such as MIL-STD-461 and SMC-S-016
- Collaborate with team members to manage and perform integration & test of your hardware on the spacecraft
Basic QualificationsEducation
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering or related science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) field with a focus on RF, millimeter wave, electromagnetics theory, and/or antenna systems.
Experience
- A minimum of 1 year of experience in RF engineering (internship, team project, graduate research, and extracurricular experience are applicable)
- Strong technical fundamentals in RF electronics and electromagnetic physics, including understanding of concepts such as: S-parameters, frequency mixing, antenna patterns & directivity, amplifier gain, output power, efficiency & linearity
- Familiar with RF test & measurement tools such as vector network analyzers (VNAs), spectrum analyzers, signal generators, and software defined radios (SDRs)
- Self-motivated with strong organizational, written, and oral communication skills
Preferred QualificationsEducation
- Master's degree in Electrical Engineering with a focus on RF, millimeter wave, electromagnetics theory, and/or antennas
Experience
- 2 to 6 years of professional experience working on RF hardware
- Demonstrated ability to own RF and/or space hardware or systems within an integrated engineering team in industry or outside of a classroom setting (e.g. CubeSats, SAE)
- Familiar with RF and antenna design and simulation tools such as Ansys Electronics Desktop HFSS, Keysight ADS, Cadence AWR Microwave Office, or similar
- Familiar with antenna measurement tools such as near field scanners
- Familiar with design and validation of hardware for operation in a launch and space environment
- Familiar with printed circuit board design and software tools such as Altium
- Familiar with data processing and visualization using Python or MATLAB
- Understanding of theoretical concepts such as link budgets, phased arrays, spread spectrum waveforms, and waveguide modes
- Experience with specific RF components such as traveling wave tube amps, solid state power amplifiers, upconverter integrated circuits, horn antennas, etc.
