Senior RF/DSP Engineer

AeroVironment•Leesburg, VA

5d•Onsite

About The Position

AV is seeking a hands-on Senior RF/DSP Engineer to expand the RF detection and classification capabilities of our Counter-UAS products. The Senior RF/DSP Engineer will investigate unfamiliar drone command, control, and telemetry links and turn incomplete RF evidence into reliable production capabilities. A typical assignment may begin with a newly encountered drone/controller pair, a collection of complex-IQ recordings, and technical guidance on approach and priorities from senior signal-processing staff. The engineer will characterize the waveform, design controlled experiments, determine which signal and protocol features can support detection or identification, implement the solution in C++, and validate its performance against real-world RF data — carrying the assignment from guided starting point to production-quality result. This is an individual-contributor engineering role. The successful candidate will personally analyze signals, develop algorithms, write and debug production code, design experiments, and support laboratory and field validation. It is not primarily a project-management, vendor-management, or advisory position. Prior experience with every waveform or protocol we encounter is neither expected nor possible. We are looking for an engineer with strong fundamentals who can learn unfamiliar systems, form testable hypotheses, and make defensible conclusions from imperfect data.

Requirements

BS or higher in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Applied Physics, or a related technical field.
Substantial professional experience developing RF, communications, radar, electronic-warfare, or related signal-processing systems.
Strong DSP and digital-communications fundamentals, including several of the following: Sampling and aliasing; Digital down conversion; FIR/IIR and multirate filtering; FFT and time-frequency analysis; Matched filtering; Detection and estimation; Carrier, phase, symbol-timing, and frame synchronization; Modulation and demodulation; Channel coding and error detection.
Demonstrated ability to investigate an unfamiliar signal or system using measurements and controlled experiments.
Experience analyzing real complex-IQ data—not only simulations or high-level system models.
Hands-on experience implementing, testing, and debugging DSP algorithms.
Proficiency writing production-quality C++ in a Linux environment.
Experience creating automated tests and replaying recorded data through algorithm pipelines.
Experience with collaborative source control and code review using Git or an equivalent system.
US Citizenship is required.

Nice To Haves

Exposure to reverse-engineering undocumented or partially documented wireless waveforms and protocols.
Experience with Software Defined Radios, RF laboratory equipment, and conducted or over-the-air testing.
Experience with frequency-hopping, spread-spectrum, OFDM, cellular, telemetry, command-and-control, or other modern communication systems.
Experience building detectors that operate in congested RF environments with measurable false-alarm requirements.
Experience with FPGA-based DSP, fixed-point implementation, hardware/software partitioning, or high-rate sample transport.
Experience optimizing real-time C++ DSP pipelines using profiling, SIMD, threading, bounded queues, and reusable buffers.
Experience generating synthetic waveforms and injecting controlled impairments such as noise, CFO, clock offset, fading, and interference.
Familiarity with direction finding, antenna arrays, phased-array processing, or emitter geolocation.
Familiarity with statistical classification or machine learning applied to RF data.
Experience with Counter-UAS, electronic warfare, SIGINT, radar, or related mission systems.

Responsibilities

Analyze wideband complex-IQ recordings from known and unfamiliar RF systems.
Characterize signal bandwidth, timing, modulation, synchronization, channel access, frequency-hopping behavior, framing, coding, and other observable properties.
Design controlled experiments that isolate transmitter behavior and reveal waveform or protocol structure.
Develop algorithms for burst detection, synchronization, demodulation, signal characterization, protocol recovery, classification, and tracking.
Distinguish target signals from noise, interference, receiver artifacts, and benign emitters in dense RF environments.
Implement and optimize production DSP capabilities in modern C++.
Use MATLAB, Python, or similar tools for exploration, simulation, visualization, and algorithm prototyping.
Convert exploratory analysis into maintainable, observable, and computationally bounded production components, following the team's established architecture and methodology.
Build synthetic waveforms, replay fixtures, and automated tests using the team's frameworks.
Validate algorithms using synthetic, conducted, over-the-air, and field-recorded data.
Measure detection probability, false-alarm rate, packet error rate, acquisition behavior, latency, and computational performance.
Diagnose failures involving CFO, sample-clock error, timing recovery, multipath, clipping, IQ imbalance, spectral inversion, dropped samples, and interference.
Work with RF, FPGA, embedded software, data science, test, and mission teams.
Document observations, assumptions, confidence levels, known limitations, and recommended next experiments.
Participate in technical reviews and incorporate feedback from senior signal-processing staff.