CHIEF ENGINEER OF RF FRONT ENDS

Bascom Hunter•O’Fallon, MO

8d•Onsite

About The Position

Bascom Hunter is hiring a Chief Engineer of RF Front Ends to lead the architecture and design of custom RF front ends for airborne, ground-vehicle, and shipboard defense platforms. The role is the senior technical authority for RF subsystems, covering work from concept and trade studies through qualification and production. It is an onsite position in O’Fallon, Missouri. This is a hands-on leadership role that includes simulation, layout review, and bench work alongside the team. The position also owns RF requirements, performance budgets, traceability, and verification strategy end to end.

Requirements

U.S. citizenship and the ability to obtain or hold a DoD security clearance; the clearance level is not specified.
A master’s or Ph.D. in Electrical, RF, or Microwave Engineering; a bachelor’s degree with extensive relevant experience may be considered.
15 or more years in RF, microwave, or millimeter-wave hardware development, including receiver and transmitter design and end-to-end RF performance analysis.
Proficiency with RF simulation tools such as Keysight ADS, Cadence AWR, Ansys HFSS, or equivalent.
Proficiency with RF test equipment, including network, spectrum, and noise figure analyzers.
A track record of leading multidisciplinary teams, defining requirements, and taking hardware through qualification.

Nice To Haves

Experience with microwave and millimeter-wave front ends; specific bands are not stated.
Experience with phased-array, multichannel, wideband, or high-dynamic-range architectures.
RF packaging, thermal analysis, and EMC experience.
Production test and yield improvement experience.
Background in radar, electronic warfare, SATCOM, or other defense and aerospace RF applications.

Responsibilities

Set the technical vision and architecture for RF front-end products and lead supporting trade studies.
Define RF performance requirements and system budgets, including noise figure, gain, linearity, dynamic range, output power, phase noise, isolation, and spurious performance.
Evaluate emerging RF technologies, components, and packaging approaches to support product roadmaps and manage obsolescence.
Lead and contribute hands-on to RF and microwave circuit design, simulation, electromagnetic modeling, and layout.
Guide the design of RF modules, wideband receivers, transmit chains, and multichannel front ends within power, thermal, EMC, and packaging constraints.
Integrate RF front ends with antennas, frequency generation, DSP, and platform systems, and resolve issues such as spurs, coupling, oscillation, and desensitization.
Establish verification strategies and acceptance criteria, and approve test plans, test reports, and qualification evidence.
Lead lab characterization, environmental qualification, and root-cause investigations of RF performance issues.
Serve as the final technical authority for RF front-end design decisions and lead design and architecture reviews.
Mentor RF engineers and establish design guidelines, review criteria, and reusable design practices.
Partner with program managers on technical baselines, risk, and schedule, and support proposals and customer technical discussions.