Senior Antenna Design Engineer

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

12h

About The Position

Zipline is seeking a Senior Antenna Design Engineer to lead the design, integration, and validation of antenna systems for their autonomous aircraft, ground infrastructure, and supporting products. The role involves owning antenna performance from early architecture and simulation through hardware integration, regulatory certification, manufacturing, and field deployment. The engineer will work on electrically and mechanically constrained platforms where antenna performance must be balanced against aerodynamics, structural requirements, thermal constraints, industrial design, reliability, cost, and manufacturability. This position requires strong electromagnetic fundamentals, practical antenna development experience, and the ability to translate ambiguous system requirements into robust production hardware. The engineer will collaborate closely with RF, electrical, mechanical, embedded, systems, flight test, manufacturing, reliability, and regulatory teams.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, applied physics, electromagnetics, or a related technical field.
Typically 7 or more years of professional experience developing antennas or closely related RF hardware for production systems.
Strong understanding of electromagnetic theory, antenna fundamentals, transmission lines, impedance matching, polarization, coupling, radiation efficiency, and propagation.
Demonstrated experience taking at least one antenna system from concept through integration, verification, and production.
Experience designing antennas for mechanically constrained products such as aircraft, drones, robotics, automotive systems, mobile devices, wearables, or IoT products.
Proficiency with a full-wave electromagnetic simulation tool such as HFSS, CST, FEKO, or an equivalent platform.
Hands-on experience with vector network analyzers, spectrum analyzers, signal generators, RF power meters, and antenna-measurement systems.
Experience interpreting three-dimensional radiation patterns, chamber data, efficiency measurements, link-test results, and statistical production data.
Working knowledge of RF PCB design, feed networks, matching circuits, connectors, cables, grounding, shielding, and electromagnetic compatibility.
Ability to analyze complex system interactions and isolate issues spanning antenna, radio, electrical, mechanical, embedded, and environmental domains.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical tradeoffs to multidisciplinary stakeholders.
Ability to operate with significant autonomy, prioritize effectively, and drive technically complex programs to completion.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree or PhD in electrical engineering, electromagnetics, applied physics, or a related field.
Experience designing antennas for unmanned aircraft, aerospace platforms, autonomous vehicles, or safety-critical systems.
Experience with cellular antenna systems, including LTE, 5G, carrier aggregation, MIMO, and over-the-air performance.
Experience with high-accuracy or multiband GNSS antenna systems.
Experience with conformal antennas, phased arrays, electronically steered antennas, or direction-finding systems.
Familiarity with composite structures, carbon fiber, radomes, environmental sealing, and antenna-material characterization.
Experience with RF coexistence, desense, intermodulation, passive intermodulation, and electromagnetic compatibility.
Familiarity with scripting or data-analysis tools such as Python, MATLAB, or equivalent software.
Experience developing automated antenna-measurement, simulation, optimization, or test-data-analysis workflows.
Knowledge of regulatory requirements and test methods relevant to airborne, cellular, intentional-radiator, and international products.
Experience working directly with antenna suppliers, contract manufacturers, test laboratories, and certification bodies.
Familiarity with design-for-manufacturing, tolerance analysis, reliability testing, and high-volume production processes.

Responsibilities

Own antenna architecture, design, simulation, prototyping, integration, and validation for airborne and ground-based products.
Develop antennas and RF structures across technologies such as cellular, GNSS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ISM, telemetry, ADSB, UAT, command-and-control, and other licensed or unlicensed bands.
Translate communication, navigation, regulatory, and system-level requirements into antenna specifications and verification plans.
Perform electromagnetic simulations using tools such as Ansys HFSS, CST Studio Suite, Altair FEKO, or equivalent platforms.
Optimize antenna performance within tightly constrained mechanical environments containing batteries, motors, composites, metals, cables, electronics, and other RF-sensitive structures.
Conduct antenna measurements, including return loss, impedance, isolation, efficiency, gain, radiation patterns, polarization, and total radiated performance.
Plan and execute testing in anechoic chambers, outdoor antenna ranges, laboratory environments, and representative operational configurations.
Characterize antenna performance at the subsystem and complete-vehicle levels, including installed performance and platform-induced effects.
Develop antenna diversity, MIMO, isolation, coexistence, and placement strategies for systems containing multiple radios.
Work on antenna arrays, distributed antenna systems, single aperture antennas as well as co-located antenna integrations to deliver on radiated performance, and support cross functionally to deliver: coexistence, desense, regulatory and product level requirements.
Deliver antenna integration with additional follow through with specific attention to detail to harness integration, serviceability, matching networks, aperture matching, connector strategy and PCB integration.
Evaluate link performance and collaborate with RF systems engineers on link budgets, propagation assumptions, interference risks, and coverage requirements.
Investigate RF performance issues using simulation, laboratory measurements, flight-test data, and structured root-cause analysis.
Design repeatable RF test methods and fixtures for engineering validation, production testing, and supplier qualification.
Design and implement unique antenna systems and RF harnessing solutions with multi physics demands across thermal, shock, vibe, humidity, mass, and life limits.
Partner with mechanical and industrial design teams to develop antenna solutions that meet aerodynamic, environmental, structural, and packaging requirements.
Work with manufacturing and suppliers to establish antenna specifications, tolerances, inspection criteria, calibration methods, and production controls.
Support regulatory and carrier certification activities, including FCC, CE, ISED, cellular carrier, SAR, spurious-emissions, and other applicable testing.
Perform technical reviews, communicate design tradeoffs, and document decisions, risks, test results, and lessons learned.
Mentor other engineers and help establish antenna-development tools, processes, standards, and technical roadmaps for the RF organization.