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Northwood Space is a modern space infrastructure company building a global network of phased array ground stations for satellite communications, national security, global connectivity, and disaster response. The company designs, builds, and rapidly deploys vertically integrated systems that power next-generation space missions.
As Product Design Lead, you will own the technical development and execution of Northwood's antenna systems from early architecture through design, integration, manufacturing, and deployment. This is a deeply technical role for an engineer who operates as both a senior individual contributor and cross-functional product leader.
Key responsibilities include:
- Owning technical development of antenna systems or major subsystems from concept through production and field deployment
- Translating product, customer, and mission needs into system requirements, architectures, interfaces, performance budgets, and verification plans
- Coordinating development across mechanical, electrical, RF, antenna, embedded software, thermal, manufacturing, test, supply chain, and field operations
- Building and managing development schedules, technical milestones, critical-path dependencies, and risk-mitigation plans
- Leading system-level trade studies across antenna performance, structural design, power, thermal behavior, reliability, manufacturability, cost, and deployment speed
- Driving prototype builds, system integration, test campaigns, root-cause investigations, and production-readiness reviews
- Contributing directly to design, analysis, prototyping, testing, and troubleshooting within your primary engineering discipline
- Providing clear updates to engineering leadership on progress, risks, decisions, and resource needs
Required qualifications:
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, RF Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related technical discipline
- 3+ years developing complex hardware, antenna systems, RF products, aerospace systems, or similarly multidisciplinary technology
- Deep individual-contributor expertise in mechanical design, electrical hardware, RF hardware, antenna engineering, embedded systems, or systems integration
- Demonstrated experience owning complex hardware products or subsystems through design, prototyping, integration, testing, and delivery
- Strong systems-thinking ability and experience managing technical interfaces and tradeoffs across multiple engineering disciplines
- Experience turning ambiguous product objectives into requirements, development plans, schedules, and test strategies
- Hands-on experience building, integrating, testing, and troubleshooting physical hardware systems
- Strong organization, communication, and cross-functional leadership skills
Preferred qualifications include experience with phased-array antennas, ground station antennas, satellite communications systems, radar systems, antenna structures, RF enclosures, electronics packaging, thermal management, environmental testing, design for manufacturing, and resolving complex integration issues across mechanical, electrical, RF, embedded, and software boundaries.
Note: U.S. citizenship or lawful permanent resident status required due to ITAR export regulations.
