Lead Antenna Engineer

As the Lead Antenna Engineer at Impulse, your core responsibility will be to lead a team designing antenna systems for spacecraft communication systems and GNSS receivers. You will work with RF engineers, avionics hardware engineers, mechanical engineers, and others to develop performant and maintainable solutions. You will own the antenna design lifecycle from initial design inception through prototype and characterization and supporting the design on orbit.  

Responsibilities

• Define antenna and feed network systems for low, medium, and high gain spacecraft antennas 
• Lead a team of all-star responsible engineers working on passive and active antenna designs ranging from LEO to deep space 
• Architect and implement engineering processes to streamline antenna development, verification, and successful production 
• Drive 1GHz – 30GHz antenna designs from initial analysis to prototype and complete characterization 
• Work closely with RF engineers and mechanical engineers to integrate antenna designs into RF front ends and vehicle structures 
• Optimize antenna designs for power handling, volume and mass constraints, and radiation and thermal environments present on orbit 
• Analyze real-world performance of antennas, debug antenna issues on completed vehicles, and investigate methods to improve vehicle radiated performance 
• Support RF and avionics teams by performing EM simulations of PCBs and other vehicle structures for desense analysis 

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, science, or related field 
• 5+ years experience in research or development of antennas 
• Familiarity with 3D EM simulation tools such as CST, HFSS, COMSOL, or Cenos 
• Experience analyzing antenna systems in the lab (s-parameters, isolation, radiation patterns, propagation effects, etc) 
• Strong foundations in RF concepts such as impedance matching, s-parameters, microwave network analysis, and power handling