RF Engineer

Job Description: RF Engineer

Job Title:
RF Engineer

Location:
San Francisco, Pittsburgh.

Job Type:
Full-time

About Us:
Swan delivers the future of defense and industry through scalable autonomous products. Swan is backed by leading defense VCs including a16z's American Dynamism fund.

Role Overview:
We are seeking an experienced RF Engineer to join our team. This role will support the development of an electronic warfare detection and mapping product through hands-on RF and SDR experimentation, rapidly building, testing, and refining sensing prototypes. The role emphasizes fast iteration, in-field testing, and fielding working prototypes—assembling and tuning RF front ends, executing disciplined data collections, and developing DSP workflows to detect and characterize emitters from raw I/Q data. Working closely with senior engineers and researchers, the engineer will translate ideas into practical experiments, validate performance with real-world data, document results, and help evolve reliable, deployable systems for complex RF environments.

Responsibilities

• Build and iterate RF sensing prototypes for electronic warfare (EW) mapping experiments, including assembling and tuning receive chains (antenna → filtering → LNA/attenuation → SDR) and validating performance through testing.

• Execute field-style data collections using SDR platforms (USRP-class preferred), improving measurement reliability and quality through practical iteration (gain staging, front-end behavior, timing and metadata discipline).

• Develop DSP workflows on raw I/Q data to detect and characterize signals of interest (time–frequency analysis, correlation/matched filtering, detection metrics, spectral features), with an emphasis on identifying and tracking emitters.

• Apply lightweight parameter estimation and modeling to convert measurements into interpretable outputs (e.g., power trends, signal presence probability), and identify failure modes driven by real-world propagation and receiver artifacts.

• Create simple, robust data tooling to support experimentation, including repeatable capture → replay → evaluation workflows.

• Collaborate closely with senior engineers and researchers to translate ideas into structured experiments, validate assumptions with real data, and clearly document results and lessons learned.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent experience) in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Physics, or a closely related field.

• Strong hands-on engineering mindset, including comfort building RF setups, swapping components, collecting measurements, and iterating until systems perform as expected.

• Foundational knowledge of digital signal processing, including several of the following:

• I/Q sampling fundamentals

• FFTs and spectrograms (STFT)

• basic filtering concepts

• correlation and matched filtering

• detection fundamentals (thresholding, false alarms, probability of detection)

• Prior exposure to SDR systems (coursework, internship, or personal projects), ideally using tools such as UHD, GNU Radio, SoapySDR, or Python-based SDR workflows, including experience capturing and interpreting spectrum and baseband data.

• Proficiency in Python (with willingness to work in C++ as needed) for analysis scripts, basic pipelines, and reproducible experimentation.

• Self-motivated and adaptable, with the ability to learn quickly, make progress independently, and ask thoughtful questions early.

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior projects involving RF systems, such as:

• antennas, LNAs, filters, and gain staging

• diagnosing interference, spurs, compression/clipping

• familiarity with lab tools (spectrum analyzer, signal generator, VNA, oscilloscope)

• Exposure to navigation, estimation, or sensor fusion concepts (e.g., EKF fundamentals, uncertainty, coordinate frames).

• Interest in field experimentation, including drones/robotics platforms, sensor logging, multi-stream synchronization, and test planning.

• Experience with SIGINT, spectrum monitoring, or interference hunting (academic or personal is fine), particularly involving real over-the-air signals.