Engineering Manager, RF Hardware Verified today

Role Overview

CesiumAstro is seeking an Engineering Manager, RF Hardware to lead RF electronics teams across multiple sites and product lines. This is a highly technical leadership role delivering RF hardware on schedule across phased arrays, RF front-end modules, up- and down-converters, and software-defined radios.

You will provide technical ownership for board- and box-level RF designs while leading team execution, staffing, and engineering process maturity. Beyond people leadership, you will contribute hands-on technical expertise to critical designs, architecture reviews, and complex debug activities, ensuring products are scalable, manufacturable, testable, and robust at production volumes.

Job Duties and Responsibilities

• Maintain technical integrity and engineering excellence for RF electronics development across the company.
• Establish, mature, scale, and enforce RF hardware development processes, including analysis and simulation templates, schematic design standards, checklists, and layout best practices for dense, high-layer-count PCBs.
• Lead and participate in rigorous architecture and design reviews, ensuring appropriate subject matter expert engagement across digital, RF, power, firmware, and mechanical disciplines.
• Apply strong working knowledge of adjacent disciplines to ensure board- and system-level success.
• Contribute directly to board-level RF designs as needed, particularly in high-risk or schedule-critical programs.
• Lead or support complex debug efforts involving RF boards.
• Ensure RF hardware designs are buildable and testable at scale using DFM and DFT best practices.
• Drive disciplined handoff from engineering to manufacturing through close collaboration with manufacturing engineering, supply chain, and production test engineering.
• Ensure designs meet quality, reliability, and scalability requirements for aerospace and defense production environments.
• Partner with Supply Chain to ensure component availability, lifecycle risk mitigation, and cost awareness.
• Drive design reuse, modular architectures, and platform commonality across products to accelerate execution and reduce risk.

Team Leadership, Staffing and Performance

• Build, scale, and lead a high-performing RF hardware engineering team.
• Advocate for realistic schedules while holding the team accountable to delivery commitments.
• Lead hiring activities, including writing job descriptions, conducting interviews, and making hire/no-hire decisions.
• Establish clear development paths and growth opportunities for high-performing engineers.
• Address performance issues promptly and constructively.
• Actively close skill gaps through hands-on mentorship, training initiatives, or targeted hiring.
• Provide one-on-one coaching, mentoring, and deep technical guidance.
• Serve as a key contributor to early-stage engineering execution planning, including collaboration with Business Development and Systems Engineering.
• Plan and manage budgets related to staffing, lab equipment, capital equipment, and design/simulation software.
• Maintain strong working relationships across Engineering, Quality, and Operations.

Requirements and Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Electrical Engineering required.
• Minimum of 7 years of direct board-level RF hardware engineering experience, preferably in aerospace environments.
• 1-3 years of small-team technical leadership or engineering management experience preferred but not required.
• Demonstrated deep expertise in RF board design, including strong working knowledge of the digital and power electronics required to make an RF board come alive.
• Software-defined radio experience preferred.
• Experience supporting design for manufacturability (DFM), design for test (DFT), and transition from development to production.
• Proven ability to conduct rigorous technical reviews, mentor engineers, and communicate effectively across disciplines.
• Ability to balance architectural rigor with execution speed in a fast-paced development environment.
• Proficiency with RF simulation and analysis tools such as Pathwave System Design (SystemVue), RF Synthesis (Genesys), and HFSS.
• Deep hands-on experience with schematic capture and PCB layout tools such as Altium.
• Strong technical and non-technical communication skills.

Employment and Compensation

Full-time employment. Offers include company stock options and a generous benefits package including health, dental, vision, HSA, FSA, life, disability and retirement plans.

Required Eligibility

To conform with United States Government Space Technology Export Regulations, the applicant must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., conditional resident, asylee or refugee, or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.