About this Senior Antenna Engineer role at Astranis
Astranis builds advanced satellites for high orbits, expanding humanity’s reach into the solar system. Today Astranis satellites provide dedicated, secure networks to highly-sophisticated customers across the globe – large enterprises, sovereign governments, and the US military.
With five satellites on orbit and many more set to launch soon, the company is servicing a backlog of more than $1 billion of commercial contracts. Astranis is the preferred satellite communications partner for buyers with stringent requirements for uptime, data security, network visibility, and customization.
Astranis has raised over $1.2 billion from some of the world’s best investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, Blackrock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, and Snowpoint, and employs a team of 500 engineers and entrepreneurs. Astranis designs, builds, and operates its satellites out of its 153,000 sq. ft. headquarters in Northern California, USA.
Senior Antenna Engineer
As a Senior Antenna Engineer you will be responsible for the design, qualification, and procurement of antenna system components for ongoing production as well as R&D programs. You will optimize system-level antenna and RF performance and introduce improvements at the component and system level. Required hardware design efforts include feed array elements, polarization and frequency selective surfaces, reflector systems including sub reflectors, and diplexers and OMT's for geosynchronous communication satellites. This work regularly entails cross-disciplinary collaboration with structural, thermal, and communication engineers to achieve overall system requirements.
You will also work with our business development team to propose and develop novel antenna solutions that satisfy customer requirements, and use those investigations as an opportunity to improve the performance of our antenna systems.
Role
- Leverage cutting-edge design tools to realize high-performance communications antenna systems with on-orbit flexibility to meet evolving customer demand.
- Work with vendors to design and procure space-qualified antenna and RF components and validate their performance through clean-room and anechoic chamber testing.
- Co-design antenna systems in conjunction with other technical disciplines including Structural/Thermal and Software-Defined Radio to achieve overall system requirements.
- Work with the sales team to propose novel antenna systems that satisfy customer needs.
- Assist in recruiting, interviewing, and hiring additional teammates to our rapidly-growing team.
Requirements
- Ability to relocate to San Francisco to work onsite as we design, integrate and test mission critical hardware.
- 5 - 15+ years of experience in relevant industry or academic roles.
- Demonstrated ability to implement high performance antenna systems in research or industry settings.
- Strong ability to collaborate with diverse engineering disciplines to collectively design and build performant RF/antenna systems, including mechanical, thermal, systems and software engineering.
- Strong antenna and microwave engineering fundamentals including theory of impedance matching, filters, combiners, amplifiers, etc.
- Experience measuring components using vector network analyzers and antenna measurement ranges, either anechoic or near field scanners.
- Demonstrated ability to solve engineering challenges in innovative and creative ways.
- Capable of using industry-standard design tools such as CST, HFSS, or TICRA and scripting to solve engineering problems using Matlab or Python.
Bonus
- Experience with digital beamforming, active feed networks, or reconfigurable antennas
- Understanding of co-site interference and antenna siting optimization
- Experience with link budget and system calculations including EIRP, noise figure, and G/T
- Experience designing waveguide components (orthomode transducers, diplexer, filters, polarizers, etc)
- Experience with deployable reflectors
- Familiarity with aerospace antenna design and test principles, including spacecraft charging, passive intermodulation, and multipaction
- Experience testing for EMI/EMC performance and understanding of mitigation practices
- Experience with integrated electronics, inclusive of beamformers, amplifiers, cooling, packaging, and interconnects
- Experience with manufacturing technologies and their impacts on RF/Antenna design, including metal additive manufacturing, CNC machining, split block, composites, electroforming, and plating
Base pay is just one component of Astranis’s total rewards package. Your compensation also includes a significant equity package via incentive stock options, high-quality company-subsidized healthcare, disability and life insurance, 401(k) retirement planning, flexible PTO, and free on-site catered meals.
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