Senior RF Desense Engineer

The role

You will lead the architecture, analysis, mitigation, validation, and improvement of RF desense performance across autonomous aircraft and ground infrastructure. You will own receiver desense engineering and end-to-end electromagnetic shielding architecture for wireless platforms.

What you will do

• Own RF desense architecture, analysis, mitigation, validation, and production support.
• Develop receiver desense budgets and performance requirements.
• Identify and mitigate receiver sensitivity degradation from onboard electronic subsystems.
• Analyze conducted and radiated interference mechanisms.
• Characterize RF coupling paths through PCBs, cables, antennas, and enclosures.
• Develop practical mitigation strategies including shielding, filtering, and grounding.
• Define Zipline's end-to-end electromagnetic shielding architecture.
• Design connector and cable interconnect shielding architectures.
• Lead product-level shielding architecture.
• Drive shielding design decisions through simulation, laboratory characterization, and testing.

Required qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering or a related technical field.
• 7 or more years of professional experience developing RF hardware or wireless communication systems for production products.
• Strong understanding of RF receiver architecture, cascaded receiver performance, sensitivity, noise figure, blocking, dynamic range, selectivity, and receiver optimization.
• Demonstrated experience investigating and resolving RF desense issues within complex wireless systems.
• Demonstrated experience developing shielding architectures from RF circuit level through complete products.
• Strong understanding of electromagnetic coupling mechanisms.
• Experience designing products that integrate multiple simultaneous wireless technologies.
• Experience developing shielding strategies for platforms requiring simultaneous operation of high-power transmitters and high-sensitivity receivers.
• Experience balancing shielding effectiveness with mechanical design, thermal management, and reliability.
• Familiarity with multi-radio systems and the interaction between RF front ends, antennas, and digital electronics.
• Experience taking RF hardware from concept through integration, verification, certification, and production.
• Familiarity with RF PCB layout, transmission lines, grounding, shielding, power integrity, signal integrity, and electromagnetic compatibility.

Nice to have

• Master's degree or PhD in Electrical Engineering or a related field.
• Experience with autonomous aircraft, robotics, aerospace, automotive, or other highly integrated embedded systems.
• Experience supporting RF coexistence validation for complex multi-radio platforms.
• Experience with cellular carrier certification, PTCRB, GCF, and international cellular deployments.
• Familiarity with RF simulation tools such as Keysight ADS, Cadence AWR, Ansys HFSS, CST Studio Suite, or Altair FEKO.
• Experience performing EMI/EMC compliance testing, shielding effectiveness characterization, and electromagnetic susceptibility testing.
• Knowledge of RF front-end architectures, antenna integration, MIMO systems, diversity techniques, and advanced LTE/5G radio architectures.
• Familiarity with Python, MATLAB, or equivalent tools for RF analysis, automation, and data processing.
• Experience working directly with RF semiconductor vendors, connector suppliers, shielding material vendors, certification laboratories, contract manufacturers, and wireless module suppliers.

Benefits

• Medical, dental and vision insurance
• Paid time off
• Equity compensation
• Discretionary annual or performance bonuses
• Sales incentives

About the company

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service. They design, build, and operate the world’s largest autonomous logistics system to deliver critical supplies.