Antenna Engineer (Starship) - Hawthorne CA

Responsibilities

This team is responsible for RF engineering for the Starship vehicles. This includes both hardware product development (of radios/antennas), as well as ownership of the comm system architecture, analysis, and verification.

Hardware development involves managing the development of your product, from design concept through prototyping, qualification testing, and moving into stable production. Systems roles involve extreme ownership of a system from design concept, through integration and test, and even support analysis or on-console for flight.

Work may vary in frequency band from UHF (400 MHz) through Ka-band (40 GHz). We also do work outside of communications, including GPS and radar for sensing.

We support both the orbital starship vehicle (current development that can be observed in Starbase) as well as the HLS lunar missions for NASA Artemis.

We own communications from the baseband (FPGA + modem) through the passband (RF + antenna), and we work closely with mechanical, production, and integration teams.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline
• 1+ years of relevant professional or project experience with antennas or RF systems
• 1+ years of experience with 3D electromagnetic simulation tools

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or higher in an engineering discipline with emphasis in electromagnetic theory and/or microwave circuits
• Master's degree in electrical engineering (electromagnetic or circuits)
• Experience with test equipment such as spectrum analyzer, signal generator, network analyzer, power meters, and RF passive components
• Proficiency with basic RF concepts such as impedance matching, linear and aperture antennas, smith chart, power handling metrics (IIP2, IMD), microwave network analysis, RF filter design
• Experience with near-field or far-field chamber design and operation
• Experience with electrical schematic capture software (Altium, Orcad or similar)
• Experience with electromagnetics simulation tools such as HFSS, CST, Savant, or similar – including tradeoffs of FEM, MoM, FDTD, and PO methods
• Familiar with one of the mainstream RF circuit simulation tools: AWR, ADS, Genesys
• Experience with Python, MATLAB, or C/C++ programming for data analysis or test equipment interfacing
• Basic CAD skills for prototype designs and working directly with mechanical engineers

Skills

• Excellent communication and documentation skills
• Able to collaborate with other engineering disciplines

Pay, Benefits & Schedule

Pay range: Antenna Engineer/Level I: $ 125,000.00 - $145,000.00/per year
Antenna Engineer/Level II: $145,000.00 - $175,000.00/per year

Your actual level and base salary will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: job-related knowledge and skills, education, and experience.

Those with an active clearance will receive a 10% differential, up to an additional $20,000 annually, once officially briefed into a classified program.