RF Waveform Analyst

About the role

Are you passionate about providing real, immediate impact to the country’s toughest national security problems? Do you enjoy digging into complex RF signals, determining how communications systems work, and developing new approaches to characterize and understand signals and how they tie to protocols? If so, we’re looking for someone like you to join our team at APL. We are excited to expand our team of RF Waveform Analysts at APL. We are seeking engineers with experience in RF communications, digital signal processing, and communications protocols that are passionate about solving challenging waveform and signal-analysis problems. As a member of our team, you will analyze, characterize, and evaluate complex RF signals and communications protocols. You will develop algorithms, software, and analysis techniques to detect, process, characterize, and understand RF waveforms collected in laboratory and operational environments. You will have opportunities to lead technical efforts, mentor junior staff, and work directly with sponsors to develop solutions to critical national security challenges. Specific applications span several mission and research areas across the Department of Defense (DoD) and Intelligence Community (IC).

Responsibilities

• Analyze and characterize complex RF waveforms, modulation schemes, signal structures, and communications protocols.
• Develop signal processing algorithms and software to detect, classify, demodulate, synchronize, and characterize RF signals.
• Perform detailed analysis of known, partially documented, and unfamiliar RF communications systems.
• Analyze communications protocols to identify framing, packet structures, timing, synchronization, channel access, error correction, and system behavior.
• Develop innovative approaches for extracting information and understanding system behavior from RF signals and collected I/Q data.
• Design and execute laboratory and field experiments to evaluate RF waveforms, communications systems, and analysis techniques.
• Use software-defined radios (SDRs), RF laboratory equipment, and specialized analysis tools to collect, generate, replay, and analyze RF signals.
• Develop software and automated analysis tools for processing, visualizing, and exploiting large RF datasets.
• Lead or contribute to multidisciplinary technical efforts involving RF, signal processing, software, hardware, and systems engineering.
• Provide technical mentorship and guidance to early-career engineers.
• Work directly with sponsors to understand technical challenges, develop requirements, and communicate analysis results and recommendations.
• Document and present technical findings to sponsors and the technical