Principal RF Hardware Engineer (Space)

Location: Los Angeles, CA; on-site. U.S. citizenship, lawful permanent residence, protected-individual status, or eligibility to obtain the required U.S. export authorizations is required for ITAR compliance.

Base salary: $210,000–$260,000 per year, plus equity and benefits.

Company

Develops high-performance RF products and services for demanding space and defense missions, including deployable, monitorable, and scalable radio platforms.

What you will do

• Own space-radio RF hardware from architecture and cascade budgets through schematic capture, layout direction, bring-up, characterization, qualification, and flight support.
• Design and analyze receive and transmit chains including LNAs, mixers, filters, amplifiers, frequency synthesis, PLLs, data converters, and high-speed digital interfaces.
• Drive RF performance analysis covering noise figure, gain, flatness, linearity, IM3, spurious signals, phase noise, EVM, and end-to-end sensitivity.
• Lead PCB stackup, controlled-impedance routing, RF layout, grounding, shielding, and board-level thermal design.
• Perform bench bring-up and characterization using VNAs, spectrum and signal analyzers, signal generators, noise figure meters, high-speed oscilloscopes, and TDRs.
• Support environmental qualification, failure analysis, anomaly resolution, design reviews, mentorship, and technical interviews.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience designing RF and microwave hardware.
• Multiple programs with personally designed hardware that has flown and operated on orbit.
• End-to-end ownership of architecture, budgets, schematics, layout direction, bring-up, and bench characterization.
• Expertise with ECAD tools, preferably Altium, and RF/EM simulation tools such as ADS, Microwave Office, HFSS, or CST.
• Strong RF fundamentals, bench skills including soldering and rework, and experience debugging non-functional boards.
• Practical experience selecting space-grade parts, derating components, radiation tolerance, screening, upscreening, and reliability analysis.

Nice to have

• Software-defined radio architectures, direct RF sampling, and wideband data converters.
• Integration with Xilinx MPSoC or RFSoC devices.
• Phased arrays, beamforming, or multi-channel coherent systems.
• DSP and communications theory knowledge, plus Python or equivalent scripting for automated testing and data analysis.
• Experience serving as the named technical authority on programs under schedule and customer pressure.

Culture & Benefits

• Permanent senior individual-contributor role with no management requirement.
• Design standards emphasize rigorous reviews, verification, and durable documentation.
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• HSA and 401(k) programs.
• Equity grant included in total compensation.