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Principal / Sr. Principal RF Engineer

In Person (Linthicum, Maryland, United States of America)
Full Time
$105,400 – $158,000

Location:
Linthicum, Maryland, United States of America

About Northrop Grumman

Northrop Grumman solves the toughest problems in space, aeronautics, defense and cyberspace to meet the ever-evolving needs of our customers worldwide. Our 90,000 employees are Defining Possible every day using science, technology and engineering to create and deliver advanced systems, products and services. Northrop Grumman careers and internships are as varied as your interests, with a lifetime of potential that will allow you to work together with people from many backgrounds, personal passions and disciplines.

Northrop Grumman Space Systems sector delivers a decisive advantage to its customers through software-defined, hardware-enabled solutions.

The Electrical Design and Analysis (EDA) section in Linthicum, MD enables these hardware solutions by providing RF microwave architecture, design, verification, and support expertise across a wide variety of electronic sensor products. Our engineers work on complex, leading edge, high reliability electronics supporting different space platforms.

NGSS engineers share a great sense of pride knowing their contributions have a direct effect on the safety and security of the country and its allies. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity, teamwork, and bringing your whole self to work to accomplish the mission while learning and having fun along the way.

Our department is fertile ground for all experience levels to become part of our growing team and contribute to our goals. The department offers opportunities to grow on a technical track both broad and deep as well as explore project leadership or management positions. This role will support our Payload and Ground Systems Division and Remote Sensing Programs (RSP) Business Unit.

EDA is seeking engineers with experience and interest in RF/Microwave and Mixed Signal circuit card assembly (CCA) design and test including:

  • Designing, modeling, and verifying RF/microwave and mixed signal CCAs

  • Utilize analysis, simulations and prototyping to develop CCA designs

  • Managing RF budgets, frequency planning, and common assembly level interfaces

  • Predicting assembly level performance through selecting materials, components, and packaging approaches, RF chain analysis, electromagnetic simulation, data collection and analysis, and other modeling techniques

Principal RF/Microwave Design Engineer Basic Qualifications:

  • Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering or comparable STEM degree minimum of 5 years of relevant engineering experience (3+ years with MS degree; or PhD)

  • Proficient in RF/Microwave and mixed signal circuit design, schematic capture, and PWB/board layout

  • Completed and/or led multiple board designs from schematic capture to board release

  • Experience in test and troubleshooting complex mixed signal CCAs

  • Ability to provide solutions to a broad variety of RF/Microwave design and test related problems of complex difficulty

  • Exhibit intermediate to expert proficiency with industry standard RF/Microwave modeling, simulation and printed circuit board design tools (e.g. ANSYS HFSS/Maxwell, CST Microwave, Eagleware/Genesys, Keysight ADS, Xpedition, Altium)

  • Be able to work on multi-discipline engineering teams and communicate clearly within integrated product team leads

  • Easily adapt to design challenges to meet program goals and deadlines

  • US Citizenship is required

  • No clearance required to start but must have the ability to obtain and maintain a TS/SCI clearance to meet business needs

Sr. Principal RF/Microwave Design Engineer Basic Qualifications:

  • Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering or comparable STEM degree minimum of 8 years of relevant engineering experience (6+ years with MS degree; or 3+ years with PhD)

  • Proficient in RF/Microwave and mixed signal circuit design, schematic capture, and PWB/board layout

  • Completed and/or led multiple board designs from schematic capture to board release

  • Experience in test and troubleshooting complex mixed signal CCAs

  • Ability to provide solutions to a broad variety of RF/Microwave design and test related problems of complex difficulty

  • Expert proficiency with industry standard RF/Microwave modeling, simulation and printed circuit board design tools (e.g. ANSYS HFSS/Maxwell, CST Microwave, Eagleware/Genesys, Keysight ADS, Xpedition Altium,)

  • Demonstrated Technical Team Leadership and ability to work on multi-discipline engineering teams and communicate clearly within integrated product team leads

  • Easily adapt to design challenges to meet program goals and deadlines

  • US Citizenship is required

  • No clearance required to start but must be able to obtain and maintain a TS/SCI clearance to meet business needs.

Preferred Qualifications:

  • Active Top Secret / SCI security clearance

  • Experience in Worst Case Circuit Analysis (WCCA) including logic compatibility, component derating, timing analysis, signal and power integrity analyses

  • Signal integrity analysis (SERDES, Bit error rates, jitter components and contributors, board to board analysis)

  • Expertise in working with receiver/exciters, conducting RF performance analysis, and implementing digital beamforming

  • High-speed digital circuit design experience

  • Familiarity with Point of Load (PoL) design

  • Experience in integrating FPGA/Digital controls on the bench (no VHDL experience required)

  • Understanding of basic signal processing

  • RF budgeting, frequency planning, RF chain analysis and modeling

  • Component selection and/or custom component requirements flow down and trades

  • Ceramic and organic printed circuit board materials, design, fabrication, and assembly processes

  • Integrated Circuit packaging techniques including chip-and-wire, QFN, flip-chip

  • Product life cycle support from concept through production support

  • Designing for high reliability, space requirements and environments

  • AESA / phased array, Radar, SIGINT, or SATCOM experience