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Salary: USD 140,000 - 220,000 / annual
CHAOS Industries is seeking a Senior RF Engineer to design, analyze, integrate, and verify high-reliability RF and microwave electronics for aerospace and defense applications. This is a hands-on hardware role spanning the full product lifecycle—from early architecture and component trade studies through detailed design, testing, production support, and post-production sustainment of mission-critical systems.
You will translate system requirements into robust RF implementations, integrate and troubleshoot prototype hardware, and validate performance through lab and field experimentation. The role emphasizes working with real hardware, real measurements, and real system tradeoffs, supported by simulation tools like HFSS, ADS, and AWR.
Key responsibilities include:
- Design, analyze, prototype, and tune RF circuit boards incorporating catalog MMICs (LNAs, power amplifiers, baluns, filters, mixers) and associated bias and matching networks
- Perform architecture development and component trade studies to meet system-level RF performance requirements
- Plan and execute RF testing and characterization at board, module, and subsystem levels
- Contribute to RF test equipment, fixtures, and automation design and specification
- Collaborate with systems, power, digital, mechanical, and software engineers on RF integration
- Serve as technical contributor from development through production and post-production, including failure analysis and field support
- Support linear, nonlinear, and electromagnetic simulations
- Support PCB layout (Altium) and RF stack-up definition, including impedance control, grounding, shielding, and isolation techniques
CHAOS Industries, founded in 2022 and headquartered in Los Angeles, has raised $1 billion in funding from 8VC, Accel, and Valor Equity Partners. The company operates offices in Washington D.C., San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, and London, with a team of 350+ employees.
**Requirements:**
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering with 4+ years of progressively responsible RF engineering experience (or Master's with 3+ years, or PhD with relevant experience)
- Hands-on experience with RF test equipment (VNAs, spectrum analyzers, signal generators, power meters)
- Strong understanding of RF fundamentals: gain, noise figure, linearity, phase noise, stability, impedance matching
- Demonstrated ability to analyze, troubleshoot, and resolve complex RF circuit performance issues
- Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance
**Preferred qualifications:**
- Experience with radar, EW, remote sensing, or communications subsystem architecture and performance analysis
- Experience planning and executing lab and field experiments with test planning, data collection, and measurement correlation
- RF front-end prototyping and integration experience (LNAs, PAs, filters, mixers, frequency conversion chains, antenna interfaces)
- Familiarity with antenna/system integration, EMI/EMC, environmental constraints, and aerospace/defense standards
- Experience correlating simulation, analysis, and measured data to refine designs and retire technical risk
- Experience supporting design reviews, customer interactions, verification planning, and development-to-production transition
- Active U.S. security clearance
- Power amplifier design, analysis, and integration experience
- EMI/EMC considerations for RF systems and aerospace standards compliance
- Mixed-signal or RF/digital interface experience
- Manufacturing considerations for RF hardware, tolerance analysis, and yield drivers
- Production hardware and fielded systems support experience
- RF PCB layout best practices and design-for-manufacturing knowledge
