- Robot type
- Drone · Defense
- Location
- LeesburgVirginiaUSA
- Job type
- Hardware
- Posted
- Aug 31, 2026
- Salary
- $153,500–$234,250 a year
Full-time
Principal RF/DSP Engineer
Job description
AV is seeking a hands-on Principal RF/DSP Engineer to take on the hardest RF detection and classification problems in our Counter-UAS products.
The P rincipal RF/DSP Engineer will own our most difficult and least-documented RF targets end-to-end — signals where the first several hypotheses will be wrong, where documentation does not exist, and where the path from "we recorded something" to "we can reliably detect and identify it" must be invented, not followed.
A major focus of this role is direction finding. Our line-of-bearing capability needs a strong technical owner, and this engineer will drive its improvement: antenna-array signal processing, bearing estimation, array calibration, and…
Job responsibilities
- Take ownership of our most difficult unfamiliar RF targets with no prior framing: generate hypotheses, rank them, and design the experiment plan that discriminates between them.
- Analyze wideband complex-IQ recordings from known and unfamiliar RF systems.
- Characterize signal bandwidth, timing, modulation, synchronization, channel access, frequency-hopping behavior, framing, coding, and other observable properties.
- Design controlled experiments that isolate transmitter behavior and reveal waveform or protocol structure, and decide when a line of investigation should be redirected or abandoned.
- Develop algorithms for burst detection, synchronization, demodulation, signal characterization, protocol recovery, classification, and tracking.
- Design, implement, and own reusable signal-processing components — synchronization libraries, synthetic-waveform and impairment-injection frameworks, replay fixtures, and validation harnesses — used across the team.
- Own and improve line-of-bearing performance: develop and refine array signal-processing algorithms for bearing estimation (e.g., correlative interferometry, subspace methods such as MUSIC, beamforming), and quantify…
- Diagnose and mitigate real-world DF error sources including array calibration drift, mutual coupling, channel phase/gain mismatch, multipath, platform and mast effects, and coherent-source conditions.
Job requirements
- BS or higher in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Applied Physics, or a related technical field.
- Substantial professional experience developing RF, communications, radar, electronic-warfare, or related signal-processing systems.
- Strong DSP and digital-communications fundamentals, including several of the following: Sampling and aliasing; Digital downconversion; FIR/IIR and multirate filtering; FFT and time-frequency analysis;
- Demonstrated ability to independently investigate an unfamiliar signal or system using measurements and controlled experiments, from initial hypothesis through validated conclusion.
- Experience analyzing real complex-IQ data—not only simulations or high-level system models.
- Hands-on experience implementing, testing, and debugging DSP algorithms.
- Proficiency writing production-quality C++ in a Linux environment.
- Hands-on experience with direction finding and antenna-array signal processing: bearing estimation on real multichannel data (interferometric, beamforming, or subspace methods), array calibration, and an understanding…