Engineering Manager, RF Hardware

Overview

Please Note: To conform with the United States Government Space Technology Export Regulations, the applicant must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., conditional resident, asylee or refugee (protected individuals as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

At Cesium Astro
, we are developers and pioneers of out-of-the-box communication systems for satellites, UAVs, launch vehicles, and other space and airborne platforms. We take pride in our dynamic and cross-functional work environment, which allows us to learn, develop, and engage across our organization. If you are looking for hands-on, interactive, and autonomous work, Cesium Astro is the place for you. We are actively seeking passionate, collaborative, energetic, and forward-thinking individuals to join our team.

We are seeking an Engineering Manager, RF Hardware to lead and coordinate our RF teams across multiple sites and product lines. This leadership role is critical to ensuring design consistency, best practices, and high-quality deliverables across a broad portfolio of hardware platforms.

This position is a highly technical leadership role responsible for delivering well-engineered RF hardware — on schedule — across all product lines. This role provides technical ownership for board- and box-level RF hardware development while leading team execution, staffing, and engineering process maturity in a fast-growing aerospace and defense startup environment.

In addition to people and process leadership, this role contributes hands-on technical expertise to critical RF hardware designs, reviews, and debug efforts, ensuring products are scalable, manufacturable, and testable at production volumes.

• Maintain technical integrity and engineering excellence for RF electronics development across the company.
• Establish, mature, scale, and enforce engineer-friendly RF hardware development processes, including analysis and simulation templates, schematic design standards, layout best practices, and design and review checklists.
• Lead and participate in rigorous design reviews, ensuring appropriate subject matter expert (SME) engagement.
• Apply strong working knowledge of adjacent disciplines—power electronics, digital electronics, mechanical engineering, and firmware/software—to ensure board- and system-level success.
• Contribute directly to board-level and unit-level RF hardware designs as needed.
• Lead or support critical debug efforts across development and production phases.
• Ensure RF hardware designs are buildable and testable at scale using DFM and DFT best practices.
• Drive disciplined handoff from engineering to manufacturing through close collaboration with manufacturing engineering, supply chain, and production test engineering.
• Ensure designs meet quality, reliability, and scalability requirements for production environments.
• Lead RF component selection strategies aligned with product requirements, customer needs, and industry trends.
• Manage RF supplier relationships and technology roadmaps to support long-term product evolution.
• Partner with Supply Chain to ensure component availability, risk mitigation, and cost awareness.

• Build, scale, and lead a high-performing RF hardware engineering team.
• Advocate for realistic schedules, then hold the team accountable to delivery commitments.
• Lead hiring activities, including writing job descriptions, conducting interviews, and making hire/no-hire decisions.
• Establish clear development paths and growth opportunities for high-performing engineers.
• Address performance issues promptly and constructively.
• Actively close skill gaps through hands-on contribution or targeted hiring.
• Provide one-on-one coaching, mentoring, and technical guidance.
• Serve as a key contributor to early-stage engineering execution planning, including collaboration with Business Development.
• Drive design commonality and reuse across products to accelerate execution and reduce risk.
• Plan and manage budgets related to staffing, capital equipment, and…