Lead Electrical & RF Engineer

Acron Aviation•Grand Rapids, MI

About The Position

Acron Aviation designs, engineers, and manufactures certified avionics systems that support safety-critical flight operations across commercial and military aviation. Within Avionics, the Surveillance product line develops and sustains systems that enable aircraft awareness, collision avoidance, and airspace interoperability. Our portfolio includes TCAS, Mode S transponders, ADS-B, and integrated surveillance solutions deployed across commercial, military, and rotorcraft platforms. This work is performed in highly regulated environments and demands deep expertise across systems, hardware, software, and RF throughout the full product lifecycle. The Lead Electrical & RF Engineer is responsible for the technical leadership, architecture, development, certification support, and lifecycle management of advanced avionics systems spanning both electrical engineering and radio frequency (RF) domains. This role leads electrical, RF, and hardware engineering activities for airborne products, including transponder, TCAS, surveillance, and communications systems, while ensuring compliance with aerospace standards and customer requirements. The successful candidate will drive innovation in Size, Weight, Power, and Cost (SWaP-C) optimization, lead RF architecture and performance trade studies, leverage AI-enabled engineering tools to improve productivity and automation, and own the development of product hardware requirements and design documentation throughout the product lifecycle.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering or a related engineering discipline
10+ years of experience in aerospace, avionics, or safety-critical electronic product development
5+ years of technical leadership experience leading complex avionics RF and electrical hardware development programs
Experience managing and overseeing external engineering design partners or contract development organizations
Strong understanding of RTCA DO-160 environmental qualification requirements and RF/EE integration challenges in airborne systems
Experience developing and managing hardware requirements documentation and requirements traceability
Expertise in digital, analog, mixed-signal, RF, and power electronics design
Experience supporting certification and regulatory compliance activities

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering or related discipline
Experience with FAA, EASA, TSO, ETSO, and military avionics programs
Familiarity with DO-254, DO-178C, ARP4754A, and ARP4761 development processes
Deep experience with RF systems and surveillance technologies including Mode S Transponders, ADS-B, IFF, DME, TCAS, or ACAS
Experience implementing AI-assisted engineering workflows and automation solutions
Experience with DOORS requirements management
Experience with Altium design tools
Project leadership or engineering management experience

Responsibilities

Lead electrical engineering activities for the development of RF airborne avionics products from concept through certification and production
Define system architecture and allocate requirements across RF, analog, digital, mixed-signal, software, FPGA/firmware, mechanical, and systems engineering disciplines
Serve as technical lead for surveillance, communications, and collision avoidance products, including Mode S transponders, ADS-B systems, and TCAS equipment
Provide technical guidance, mentorship, and engineering oversight to multidisciplinary development teams across EE and RF domains
Support strategic product roadmaps and technology initiatives, including next-generation RF and avionics platform capabilities
Lead RF architecture, design integration, and technical decision-making for avionics products
Establish RF performance requirements and budgets for gain, noise figure, linearity, selectivity, isolation, spurious response, dynamic range, and coexistence requirements
Drive RF trade studies and design reviews covering circuit design, layout, shielding, grounding, EMI/EMC, and environmental constraints
Coordinate RF validation, laboratory characterization, and system integration activities
Support certification readiness by ensuring RF-related design evidence, test coverage, and compliance artifacts are complete and defensible
Develop, maintain, and own Hardware Requirements Documents (HRDs) and associated derived requirements
Ensure traceability between customer, system, hardware, software, and certification requirements
Lead requirements decomposition, validation, verification planning, and change management activities
Establish acceptance criteria and verification methods for hardware requirements
Manage and provide technical oversight of outsourced engineering partners responsible for RF, electrical, and hardware development activities
Define statements of work, technical deliverables, schedules, design reviews, and acceptance criteria
Conduct design audits and technical reviews to ensure compliance with company standards and certification requirements
Coordinate technical communication between internal stakeholders and external development organizations
Assess supplier technical risks and implement mitigation strategies
Direct the design and development of complex digital, analog, mixed-signal, RF, and power electronics hardware
Review schematics, RF signal chain implementation, PCB layouts, component selections, engineering analyses, and test results
Ensure designs meet performance, reliability, manufacturability, maintainability, and certification objectives
Support RF/hardware, hardware/software, FPGA, and system-level integration activities
Drive design margins that support DO-160 environmental qualification and EMI/EMC robustness requirements
Lead initiatives to reduce Size, Weight, Power, and Cost (SWaP-C) across avionics product portfolios
Drive design trade studies that balance performance, manufacturability, certification, and lifecycle objectives
Promote Design for Manufacturability, Design for Cost, Design for Test, and Design for Reliability principles
Establish engineering metrics and practices supporting next-generation avionics solutions
Champion the adoption of AI technologies to improve engineering productivity, quality, and development efficiency
Maintain a continuous improvement mindset and evaluate opportunities to streamline engineering workflows
Evaluate emerging AI technologies and integrate effective practices into engineering processes to reduce repetitive and low-value work
Lead hardware verification and validation activities throughout the product lifecycle, primarily through oversight of outsourced development partners
Review and approve test plans, procedures, reports, and qualification data
Support root cause analysis, troubleshooting, and corrective action investigations
Ensure complete verification coverage and certification evidence generation