Senior RF Hardware Engineer, Wideband Receivers - Design RF Boards from the Component Level Up
Tampa, FL | On-site
Opportunity Summary
Join an early-stage defense technology company building RF sensing and electronic warfare systems for demanding operational environments. Every receive, compute, and transmit board in the company's systems is designed in-house from zero. The team intentionally avoids building RF systems by connecting packaged front ends and amplifier modules to an SDR; it designs discrete, component-level hardware instead, and that is a core differentiator. You will lead RF hardware for a new wideband passive sensing product, starting from the company's existing receive and transmit paths and adapting them for a new use case, owning both the RF signal chain and the RF power and power delivery design.
You will be part of a newly formed team of four to five engineers chartered to deliver a V0 of a new distributed RF sensing product in roughly 90 days. The team starts from a short list of functional goals rather than a fixed requirements document, has a dedicated development budget, and decides for itself how to get there. Expect weekly development spins, with new PCB revisions ordered at the end of most weeks. Iterations are engineer-driven: if you see a way to make your design better, you make the call and the respin gets built.
About Us
We are a venture-backed defense technology startup founded by former Army officers with frontline electronic warfare and cyber experience. The company builds spectrum-control systems that detect, disrupt, mask, and manage wireless signals, and designs its receive, compute, and transmit boards, firmware, and software in-house down to the component level. Systems are already fielded with Army and special operations users, defense programs are advancing toward production, and a new commercial sensing product line is entering large-scale deployment. The team of roughly 15 is growing quickly ahead of its next funding round.
Job Duties
- Lead RF hardware design for a new wideband sensing product, adapting existing in-house receive and transmit paths to new requirements
- Design RF front ends covering roughly 300 MHz to 6 GHz, including preselection, filtering, LNAs, switches, gain stages, and mixers
- Own board-level power architecture and power delivery networks for RF, mixed-signal, and converter circuitry
- Capture schematics and lay out boards in Altium down to the component level, with close attention to grounding, isolation, impedance, and coupling
- Analyze and optimize noise figure, linearity, compression, spurious response, and gain distribution in congested spectrum
- Design gain strategies that preserve weak-signal detection next to strong nearby emitters
- Interface receiver hardware with Analog Devices transceivers, high-speed ADCs, FPGA platforms, and compute boards
- Bring up and characterize new boards in the lab, then drive fixes into the next weekly spin
- Support multichannel receive paths and calibration for direction finding and geolocation
- Support DFM, production test development, and EMI/EMC troubleshooting as hardware moves toward pilot production
- Work closely with FPGA, geolocation, firmware, mechanical, and systems engineers during integration
Qualifications
- BS in Electrical Engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience
- 5+ years of hands-on RF or microwave hardware design
- Demonstrated component-level RF board design using discrete LNAs, filters, switches, mixers, and amplifiers, not primarily integrating packaged RF modules
- Hands-on schematic capture and PCB layout in Altium Designer
- Experience with both the RF signal chain and RF power, including power delivery network design
- Designed at least one RF receiver or transceiver board through working, tested hardware
- Strong grasp of noise figure, dynamic range, IP3, compression, spurious response, and blocker performance
- Strong lab skills with VNAs, spectrum analyzers, signal generators, and oscilloscopes
- Able to move a board from schematic to working hardware quickly with limited spins
- U.S. citizenship required, with the ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance
- Comfortable turning broad goals into your own plan and delivering on weekly iteration cycles with minimal top-down direction
- Able to work on-site in Tampa, FL
Preferred Experience
- Multichannel or phase-coherent receiver design and channel-to-channel calibration
- Experience with SDR front ends, direct-sampling ADCs, or RFSoC-based systems
- Cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or GNSS RF experience
- RF simulation in Keysight ADS, AWR Microwave Office, or Ansys HFSS
- EMI/EMC design and pre-compliance testing
- Background in consumer wireless, telecom, medical devices, test and measurement, or other high-performance RF industries; defense experience is not required
Why Join Us
- Lead RF design for a new product line on a small team where your architecture decisions stick
- Design custom receiver and power electronics at the component level rather than integrating packaged modules
- Dedicated development budget, so the team is not forced to cut corners to hit the schedule
- Weekly build, test, and iterate cycles where engineers decide when a design needs another spin
- Optional travel to field exercises, new equipment training, and customer demonstrations for those who want it; no one is required to travel
- Health, dental, and vision coverage with employer-subsidized premiums
- 401(k) with company match, available from day one
- Unlimited PTO with no accrual period
- Streamlined hiring process: one recruiter conversation and one virtual technical interview with the team you would join
- Join at an early stage with significant ownership and long-term growth as the company scales
Compensation Details
$120,000 - $150,000
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