Senior RF Hardware Engineer

Senior RF Hardware Engineer

Department: Engineering

Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time

Location: Bristol, UK

Reporting To: Dec Rogers

Compensation: GBP 55,000 - GBP 70,000 / year

Description

We're building the UK's next generation engineering powerhouse, providing critical technology that strengthens national security and resilience. At Rowden, we design and integrate advanced systems that sense, connect, and protect data in challenging environments where quick decisions are vital. Our solutions use intelligent automation to enhance speed and efficiency and are built to be reliable and straightforward for critical operations in remote or high-pressure settings.

Headquartered in Bristol (UK), we combine modern engineering methods with cutting-edge commercial technology to create adaptable, mission-critical systems. We focus on solving the tough challenges that others overlook, ensuring our customers can operate effectively in an ever-changing world.

As part of this journey, we are expanding our RF hardware capability to design and deliver advanced wireless sensing and communication systems across Research and Product.

This function designs and delivers RF and mixed-signal hardware platforms that enable sensing, communications, and signal processing in demanding environments. These systems combine analogue RF front-end design, high-speed data conversion, and software-defined radio architectures to create adaptable and high-performance sensing platforms.

As a Senior RF Hardware Engineer, you will design and deliver the analogue and mixed-signal hardware that underpins these systems. You will work across the full RF signal chain, from antenna interfaces and RF front-end design through to ADC/DAC integration and SDR platform bring-up.

This is a hands-on engineering role working closely with RF, FPGA, embedded software, and machine learning engineers to translate system requirements into robust hardware implementations. You will play a key role in developing RF systems that are reliable, efficient and deployable in complex operational environments.

While this role offers hybrid working options, it requires a minimum of 3 days per week on-site at our Bristol HQ, with occasional travel to customer sites.

Candidates must be willing to obtain UK National Security Vetting clearance, with SC required and DV desirable.

More information about security clearance is available:
More information about security clearance is available here: (information on ).

As a Senior RF Hardware Engineer at Rowden, you will be responsible for:

• Designing RF front-end architectures including amplification stages, filtering, frequency conversion, and signal conditioning.
• Designing and owning RF and mixed-signal hardware from concept and schematic capture through to PCB implementation and hardware bring-up.
• Developing mixed-signal hardware integrating high-speed ADCs, DACs and associated clocking architectures.
• Designing multi-layer RF PCBs, ensuring strong RF performance, signal integrity, grounding strategies, shielding and manufacturability.
• Selecting and integrating RF components including amplifiers, mixers, filters, oscillators, clocking systems and converters.
• Bringing up new RF hardware platforms and validating RF performance using appropriate laboratory measurement equipment.
• Debugging and optimising RF signal chains across analogue and mixed-signal domains.
• Supporting integration of RF hardware with FPGA-based SDR platforms and embedded processing systems.
• Working closely with signal processing and FPGA engineers to ensure RF hardware supports system-level performance requirements.
• Producing high-quality design documentation, schematics and design reviews.

We are looking for someone who actively invests in their technical depth and brings:

• Strong experience designing RF and analogue hardware for wireless or radio systems.
• Experience designing RF signal chains including amplification, filtering, mixing and gain control.
• Strong understanding of the full RF signal chain, from antenna interface and RF front-end through to…