About this job

ETL is a global leading provider of RF satellite signal handling equipment for teleports, broadcasters, marine, military and governments around the world. We are looking for a highly capable RF engineer to join our team to take a key role in the development of new products as well as improvements to our existing products to ensure that our products are market-leading.

Responsibilities

This is a hands-on design role that will focus on RF design down to discrete component level – covering active and passive circuit design over a wide range of frequencies from DC to Ka-Band and possibly beyond.

It will require substantial laboratory-based work where you will be expected take ownership of your designs and be involved in the full product lifecycle, taking products from concept through to production.

• You will be expected to produce high quality RF designs that meet the agreed targets for performance, reliability, manufacturability, testability, cost and timescales. There is a high likelihood that you will also become involved in our RF over Fibre product range so an interest in this cutting-edge technology would be highly desirable.
• You will perform analysis and simulation of your designs to ensure that it complies with the requirements for gain, power levels, linearity, VSWR, NF, signal related spurii etc. This requires excellent understanding of the interaction and relationships between these key parameters.
• Through the design process you will need to work closely with Engineers from other disciplines (PCB, mechanical, electronics, software and NPI) to ensure a successful final product.
• You will also be expected to verify your designs through extensive testing and capturing of results in the lab so you will need to be comfortable (and a bit of an expert) in using the test equipment. We are very lucky to have top of the range test equipment including VNA’s, Spectrum analysers, RF power meters, Signal generators, etc. covering up to 67 GHz.
• The role will also require the following:
  • Support sales engineers on new opportunities – to offer our customers technically feasible solutions and provide accurate estimates on the effort and materials required for the development
  • Technical support to NPI and production testing when required
  • Contribute to the expansion of RF/Microwave knowledge, processes and techniques within the company

Profile

Essential Qualifications and Experience

• Electronics, physics or engineering degree. Experience in lieu of qualification may be acceptable
• Proven experience in RF and microwave design and test of active and passive circuits, DC-3 GHz (ideally up to 40 GHz) down to discrete component level. Eg. Amplifiers, Splitters & Combiners, Switches, Frequency Converters and passive networks such as Couplers, Filters, Bias Tees etc.
• Knowledge of, and experience in the use of commercially available CAD tools (ideally NI/AWR Microwave Office) for circuit and system design and simulation
• Experience of interfacing RF circuits and sub-systems to analogue and digital electronics, such as: bias circuits, power supplies and digital control circuits
• Knowledge of, and experience in PCB layout techniques, substrate materials

Desirable Qualifications and Experience

• Knowledge and experience in system simulation and analysis tools
• Experience in Design for Manufacture and Design for Test techniques
• Thorough understanding of analogue electronics
• Experience of designing electronics hardware with optoelectronic components such as solid-state lasers and photodiodes.
• Experience in RF over Optics / RF-over Fibre technologies
• A working knowledge of other Engineering disciplines such as PCB, Mechanical, Software and Digital Electronics
• Experience in Design for Compliance such as EMC
• Knowledge of RF, Microwave and Millimetric product assembly techniques
• Awareness of the Satellite Communications industry, technologies and techniques

Essential Skills

• Autonomous in the use of test equipment such as VNAs, Spectrum Analysers, Signal Generators, Noise Figure meters etc.
• Soldering and Prototyping
• Effective communicator, both written and oral, targeting all levels of knowledge or seniority
• Ability to work effectively as part of a team, or autonomously, to meet scheduled project goals and deadlines
• Strong IT skills; Office applications such as Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint etc should be ‘second nature’
• Technical documentation

Essential Personal Qualities

• Professional and approachable manner
• Self-motivated
• Positive, confident and enthusiastic attitude at all times
• Innovative and practical engineer

Other Factors

• Flexible and adaptable to fast-paced changing environments (Essential)
• Commercially minded and driven to deliver to agreed costs and timescales (Desirable)