Engineering Manager, RF Hardware

Job description

***Please Note:**To conform with the 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 (protected individuals as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.* At **CesiumAstro**, we are developers and pioneers of out-of-the-box communication systems for satellites, UAVs, launch vehicles, and other space and airborne platforms. We take pride in our dynamic and cross-functional work environment, which allows us to learn, develop, and engage across our organization. If you are looking for hands-on, interactive, and autonomous work, CesiumAstro is the place for you. We are actively seeking passionate, collaborative, energetic, and forward-thinking individuals to join our team. We are seeking an Engineering Manager, RF Hardware to lead and coordinate our RF electronics teams across multiple sites and product lines. This leadership role is critical to ensuring design consistency and high-quality execution across a diverse portfolio of phased arrays, RF front-end modules, up- and down-converters, and software-defined radios. This position is a highly technical leadership role responsible for delivering well-engineered RF hardware – on schedule – across all product lines. The role provides technical ownership for board- and box-level RF designs while leading team execution, staffing, and engineering process maturity in a fast-growing aerospace and defense startup environment. In addition to people and process leadership, this role contributes hands-on technical expertise to critical designs, architecture reviews, and complex debug activities, ensuring products are scalable, manufacturable, testable, and robust at production volumes. This front-line engineering management role is the perfect fit for excellent engineers who want to grow their impact. If you are passionate about designing great hardware, have strong interpersonal skills, and are excited by the prospect of designing *teams* to make more hardware than you can on your own – this is the role for you. Some engineering management experience is preferred but not required. The successful candidate may be a senior or principal engineer motivated to take the next step in their career. ### JOB DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES - Maintain technical integrity and engineering excellence for RF electronics development across the company. - Establish, mature, scale, and enforce engineer-friendly 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 (SME) engagement across digital, RF, power, firmware, and mechanical disciplines. - Apply strong working knowledge of adjacent disciplines – digital electronics, power electronics, mechanical engineering, software – 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 & PERFORMANCE RESPONSIBILITIES - 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. ### JOB REQUIREMENTS AND MINIMUM 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) and 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.