Senior RF Engineer

Senior RF Engineer

Engagement Type: Direct Hire / Full-Time

Location: Onsite, 5 days/week — Orlando, FL

Start Date: Immediate

Industry: Aerospace & Defense Electronics

ABOUT THE CLIENT

Our client is a publicly traded designer and manufacturer of advanced electronics and connectivity systems for the aerospace and defense industries. Their products serve commercial aviation, military aircraft, and adjacent defense platforms, with a reputation for solving demanding RF and power problems at the hardware level. The RF Engineering function is a small, deep-bench team responsible for product-level signal integrity and hardware performance — work that is hands-on, schematic-to-board, and consequential to the end system.

ROLE SUMMARY

The Senior RF Engineer will own the design, integration, and troubleshooting of RF front-end hardware at the PCB level. This is a hands-on engineering seat — not a systems-architecture or modeling role. The right person lives in the signal chain, knows where noise comes from, and has the lab and CAD chops to fix it. The team has recently been reduced and is currently augmented with contractors; this hire is part of an active effort to restore senior in-house ownership of the RF hardware function.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Design and Development

• Lead the design and development of RF front-end components and systems at the PCB level — including amplifiers, mixers, oscillators, and filters.
• Conduct RF simulation and modeling to predict performance and optimize design.
• Own transmit and receive signal chains end-to-end, reasoning about gain, noise, linearity, matching, and isolation across the chain — and how the two chains interact at the hardware level.
• Develop detailed specifications and documentation for RF systems and components.

Testing and Validation

• Implement DVT testing on PCBAs, ensuring compliance with performance and reliability standards.
• Verify designs in the lab using RF equipment including spectrum analyzers, vector network analyzers, RF signal generators, power supplies, power meters, and advanced oscilloscopes.
• Lead hardware-level noise troubleshooting — personally get into the lab, open up the hardware, and modify circuits to drive issues to root cause. Typical lab work includes bypassing components, injecting external signals, wiring in scope measurement points, and reworking the board. This is hands-on engineering work, not work delegated to a technician.
• Troubleshoot and resolve issues related to power supply performance, EMI/EMC, thermal management, and reliability.

Documentation

• Develop detailed design documentation, test instructions, and procedures.
• Ensure all designs meet relevant industry standards and regulatory requirements.

Collaboration and Continuous Improvement

• Work closely with cross-functional stakeholders to integrate PCBAs into system-level product designs.
• Provide technical support and guidance to junior engineers and technicians.
• Participate in design reviews, providing technical expertise and recommendations.
• Stay current with advancements in RF technology and incorporate relevant innovations into design practice.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering (required — not a substitutable field).
• Detailed knowledge of the entire RF signal chain.
• Experience in RF design analysis — isolation, broadband noise, spurious emissions, and intermodulation.
• Experience in PCB design across digital, analog, RF, and power subsystems.
• Hands-on experience with RF testing equipment and lab-based troubleshooting techniques.
• Demonstrated PCB design ownership in a professional CAD tool. The candidate must have personally executed designs end-to-end — not directed others. Altium Designer is the preferred tool and is what the team uses day-to-day; experience in a comparable platform (Cadence, Mentor, KiCad, etc.) is acceptable provided the candidate can ramp on Altium quickly. The focus is on design ownership, not specific tool fluency.
• Bench and rework capability — comfortable opening up hardware, soldering, adding wires, and modifying boards to isolate and resolve issues. The engineer in this seat does the lab work themselves; they do not hand it off to a technician.
• Experience with Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC/EMI) and environmental requirements.
• Track record of owning a PCB design through the full cycle: design, test, integration, and system-level support.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills — able to lead design reviews, explain RF behavior clearly to non-RF engineers and stakeholders, document technical decisions, and mentor junior engineers and technicians.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills; able to work independently and manage multiple projects simultaneously.

NICE TO HAVE

• FPGA design experience.

IDEAL CANDIDATE PROFILE

• Breaks things to fix them. This engineer personally goes into the lab, opens up the hardware, adds wires, modifies the board, and drives root cause on the bench. They are the one doing the work — not the one telling a technician what to try next.
• Bench-first instinct — comfortable with spectrum analyzers, vector network analyzers, signal generators, and a soldering iron in equal measure.
• Pragmatic and product-minded; cares about whether the hardware works in the system, not just on paper.
• Strong communicator across the board — runs effective design reviews, makes RF concepts accessible to adjacent engineering disciplines, writes clear documentation, and gives constructive technical feedback to less experienced engineers.
• Comfortable being the senior in-house voice on RF hardware after a recent team turnover, and willing to set the technical standard for the function.
• Scope note: this role does NOT require RFIC design or antenna design expertise. The work lives at the board level and across the signal chain.