Job Location: Seattle

Principal RF/Microwave Engineer — Spaceborne Radar Payloads

About the opportunity

An early-stage space company is building advanced electronically-steerable radar payloads for Low Earth Orbit, and needs a principal-level RF/microwave engineer to own one of the highest-leverage parts of the architecture: the flight-ready, phase-coherent RF hardware that determines the payload's sensitivity, power, waveform fidelity, and overall mission performance.

This is a deeply hands-on principal role, not a systems-only or simulation-only seat. You'll own RF hardware end-to-end, from architecture and budgets through circuit and PCB design, simulation, lab characterisation, integration, qualification, calibration, and production readiness.

The mission context

The company's radar technology is based on mature phased-array heritage already in full-rate production for terrestrial and airborne applications, now being transitioned to flight-ready space hardware. The RF payload is central to that, and this role directly influences system sensitivity, RF power, efficiency, coherence, and mission performance. You'd be shaping next-generation spaceborne ISR, SAR, and MTI capabilities.

The two profiles

The team is growing, and there's appetite for more than one senior RF engineer. The work splits across two chains:

A transmit focus, centred on high-power amplification (GaN SSPA and drain-switching approaches), peak RF power, PAE, AM/PM fidelity, bandwidth, and the thermal and mechanical complexity that comes with high-power transmit. This is the rarer, more senior profile and the current priority.

A receive focus, centred on sensitivity, dynamic range, channel matching, gain and noise budgets, and calibration stability.

Strong candidates often bring depth in one and working knowledge of the other. If your centre of gravity is high-power transmit, we especially want to hear from you.

What you'll own

Own the RF architecture and performance budgets. Design and verify RF transmit and/or receive chains spanning digital interfaces, RF signal conditioning, amplification, filtering, and calibration. Retire RF, thermal, power, EMI/EMC, and integration risks. Collaborate across antenna, digital, power, and spacecraft disciplines. Transition qualified hardware into repeatable production.

A typical week

Roughly 60% design, simulation, and lab work, 20% integration and support, and 20% in meetings. This is a bench-heavy role by design.

What you'll bring

Expert RF/microwave design experience across transmit and/or receive chains: RF budgets, gain and noise analysis, linearity, dynamic range, phase noise, coherence, high-power amplification, filtering, matching networks, microwave PCB design, RF simulation, lab characterisation, and calibration. Experience developing space-qualified hardware, and ideally exposure to phased arrays, radar payloads, or aerospace RF systems.

The thing that matters most: you've personally architected and delivered complex RF/microwave hardware from requirements through bring-up, characterisation, integration, and qualification, and owned it end-to-end. Engineers who've played across disciplines, tried things, hit problems, and iterated their way through are exactly the profile. Deep but narrow experience, owning one fixed slice of a chain for years without that broader ownership, is not what this role needs.

You're hands-on, rigorous, curious, and high-ownership, with strong first-principles judgement, disciplined lab habits, comfort with ambiguity, and the ability to mentor while remaining a strong individual contributor.

Practical requirements

This is an on-site role in the Seattle area. Given the mission set, US citizenship and the ability to meet security clearance requirements are required.

The honest preview

The upside is exceptional ownership of advanced radar hardware, genuinely hard RF problems, rapid design-test cycles, and direct impact on flight hardware and mission performance. The hard parts are aggressive schedules, evolving requirements, tightly coupled multidisciplinary interfaces, space-qualification constraints, and the expectation to solve problems hands-on at the bench. It suits a builder who wants deep ownership, not a specialist looking to run one narrow slice.

Director of Manufacturing 

About the opportunity

An early-stage space company is standing up a brand-new production facility in the Seattle area (Redmond) to manufacture advanced radar payloads at volume for the space and defence industry. Right now the site is close to a blank canvas. Over the coming months it becomes a functioning, high-rate factory, and this role owns that build from the ground up: the processes, the equipment, the quality system, and the team.

This is a genuinely rare brief. Not maintaining an established line, but designing and building one, in a low-mix / high-volume model aimed at producing hundreds of deliverable units per month. If you've stood up or scaled complex electronics production before and want to do it again with real ownership, this is that role.

The mission context

The company builds advanced electronically-steerable radar payloads for Low Earth Orbit, delivering high-end radar performance at a fraction of the traditional cost, which is what makes proliferated constellations viable. The technology is based on mature phased-array heritage already in full-rate production for terrestrial and airborne applications, now being transitioned to flight-ready, high-rate space manufacturing. This role is central to that transition.

What you'll own

Manufacturing leadership; high-rate space hardware production; process and operational excellence; quality and mission assurance (standing up the QMS, with a dedicated Quality function to follow); capital equipment deployment; and supply chain and supplier management. Specifically, you will:

Design the factory layout, production flow, and test and manufacturing assets for the new facility, including clean room standup. Build a culture of quality, accountability, urgency, and continuous improvement. Develop manufacturing talent and clear career paths for technicians, engineers, supervisors, and managers. Establish a data-driven operating cadence for production performance. Proactively identify manufacturing risks before they hit programme schedules. Balance quality, schedule, cost, and technical risk. Deliver reliable hardware on schedule in an environment where products and processes are still evolving.

A typical week

Roughly 30% in meetings and organisational development across departments, 20% on research, process development, and asset acquisition and deployment, and 50% on process implementation, staffing, mentoring, and reporting.

What you'll bring

The must-have is proven experience leading high-rate, high-volume manufacturing of complex electronics, ideally microwave/RF hardware or antennas. You've run a real production operation at scale, in a low-mix / high-volume model, and you know what it takes to build one product consistently and reliably rather than a high-mix prototype shop.

You're familiar with government workmanship standards and quality flow-downs. Exposure to test automation, robotics, or ML on the production line is valued. Space-qualified hardware experience is a strong plus, but volume electronics credentials come first: a space background without high-rate manufacturing depth isn't the profile here.

Above all, you bring urgency, ownership, and a genuine appetite for building a world-class production operation from scratch.

Practical requirements

This is an on-site role in the Seattle area (Redmond). Given the mission set, US citizenship and the ability to meet security clearance requirements are required.

The honest preview

This is a build-it-from-the-ground-up role with real ownership and real impact on national security capabilities. It will also mean hard work, sometimes long hours, and a deep commitment to process and timelines. It suits a builder who's scaled production before, not a sustainer.