RF Engineer

Strategic Sight Consulting•Aberdeen, MD

2d•$160,000 - $215,000

About The Position

Join our team at Strategic Sight Consulting LLC for an opportunity as an RF Engineer – Radio Systems / RF Hardware. The esteemed candidate will lead the design, development, integration, and troubleshooting of custom radio and RF hardware supporting critical national security missions. You will work across RF, digital, FPGA, and embedded systems to develop new communications capabilities, integrate RF front ends and digital processing hardware, perform board bring-up and RF characterization, and rapidly prototype solutions for advanced mission requirements.

Requirements

United States citizenship.
Active Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) security clearance.
Minimum of 10 years of relevant professional experience in RF engineering, radio systems, electrical engineering, embedded hardware, or a related technical discipline.
Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent relevant experience.
Experience designing, developing, integrating, or troubleshooting RF communication systems or radio hardware.
Strong understanding of RF fundamentals, including signal chains, filtering, amplification, frequency conversion, impedance matching, noise, and link budgets.
Experience with analog and digital circuit design and PCB-level hardware development.
Familiarity with MATLAB/Simulink, Python, C/C++, or embedded Linux.
Experience developing or integrating FPGA-based systems using Verilog, SystemVerilog, or VHDL.
Experience integrating embedded processors, FPGAs, RF transceivers, ADCs/DACs, or similar devices.
Hands-on experience with RF and electronics test equipment, including oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, VNAs, signal generators, and logic analyzers.
Ability to troubleshoot hardware at the component, board, and system levels.
Strong analytical, technical problem-solving, documentation, and cross-functional communication skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience designing a radio or RF transceiver from the board or component level, rather than solely integrating commercial radio systems.
Experience with software-defined radios, RF transceiver ICs, RF front ends, phase-locked loops (PLLs), mixers, low-noise amplifiers (LNAs), power amplifiers (PAs), and filters.
Experience implementing digital signal processing (DSP) functions in FPGA logic, including filtering, FFTs, modulation/demodulation, or digital up/down conversion.
Experience with RF/mixed-signal PCB design, controlled impedance, grounding, shielding, signal integrity, and EMI/EMC considerations.
Experience with RFSoC, SoC FPGA, high-speed ADC/DAC interfaces, or similar architectures.
Experience supporting communications, unmanned systems, electronic warfare, SIGINT, radar, or other RF-intensive defense applications.
Experience rapidly prototyping and debugging custom RF or embedded hardware.

Responsibilities

Lead the design, development, integration, and troubleshooting of custom radio and RF hardware supporting critical national security missions.
Provide hands-on engineering expertise across the full radio development lifecycle, including architecture, component selection, circuit design, FPGA integration, board bring-up, RF characterization, and system troubleshooting.
Design, develop, and integrate RF front ends, digital processing hardware, and embedded components for advanced communications systems.
Develop and integrate FPGA-based systems using Verilog, SystemVerilog, VHDL, or similar hardware description languages.
Integrate embedded processors, FPGAs, RF transceivers, ADCs/DACs, and related components into custom radio and RF hardware architectures.
Apply RF fundamentals including signal chains, filtering, amplification, frequency conversion, impedance matching, noise analysis, and link budgets to system design and troubleshooting.
Perform analog and digital circuit design and support PCB-level hardware development, integration, and test activities.
Use oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, vector network analyzers (VNAs), signal generators, logic analyzers, and other laboratory equipment to evaluate and troubleshoot RF and electronic system performance.
Troubleshoot hardware at the component, board, and system levels and identify root causes of complex RF, digital, FPGA, and embedded system issues.
Collaborate with embedded software, FPGA, cybersecurity, and systems engineering personnel to develop, integrate, and mature custom radio capabilities for sophisticated operational environments.
Rapidly prototype, test, evaluate, and refine custom RF and embedded hardware solutions in support of evolving mission requirements.