Principal Radio Systems Engineer

Blu Wireless builds mmWave networks that carry gigabits of data where fibre can’t reach and conventional radio runs out of capacity: onto trains at speed, between moving vehicles and into contested defence environments. From our Bristol headquarters, we have designed our own 60 GHz baseband modem and combine it with phased-array transceivers and mesh networking firmware to solve three hard problems: range, form factor and mobility.

Our technology is proven in service. Our track-to-train system is deployed on South Western Railway in the UK and on Caltrain’s electric fleet in Silicon Valley, delivering around 2 Gbps to moving trains. The same technology powers our Phantom family of defence products, providing resilient, self-forming and self-healing mesh connectivity across ground, air and fixed platforms for real-time exchange of tactical data.

We are a specialist engineering team bringing deep mmWave expertise to integrators, operators and defence partners, building the connectivity that data-intensive systems will depend on.

The Systems and Platforms team defines and architects the hardware implementation of our products, from the antenna array and mmWave radio transceiver through to the baseband modem and network processing platform. Its remit covers the mechanical, analogue and digital design of those platforms. The team works closely with System Engineering, Software, System Test, Customer Engineering and Product Management. We are looking for a Principal Radio Systems Engineer to be the technical authority for radio performance across our 5-71 GHz products.

You will own how our links behave in the real world: on trains at speed, on moving vehicles and aircraft, and in contested defence environments. You will turn mission and customer requirements into a radio hardware specification and define its interface with our baseband modem. You will then prove, through modelling, lab work and field trials, that the delivered hardware meets that specification.

This is a senior, hands-on individual contributor role reporting to the Director of Systems and Platforms. You will set technical direction for radio, engage with engineers across the group, and represent our radio capability to customers and partners.

• Own the radio system architecture and performance budgets for our mmWave products, covering EIRP, receiver sensitivity, noise figure, linearity and phase noise.
• Define and validate phased-array and beamforming behaviour, including beam search, tracking and handover for platforms moving at high speed.
• Build and maintain a system link budget that takes into account channel and propagation models for rail, ground, airborne and maritime scenarios, including atmospheric and rain fade, blockage, multipath and Doppler.
• Lead coexistence and interference analysis, and the radio aspects of resilience in contested and congested spectrum for defence applications.
• Specify RF front-end, transceiver and antenna requirements, and work with hardware and platform engineers on design trade-offs, integration and verification.
• Define radio test strategy: lab characterisation, over-the-air and chamber measurements, production test limits and field trials, and analyse the results to close the loop with models.
• Act as technical lead for radio regulatory compliance across target markets, including ETSI, FCC and other national requirements, working with our compliance team.
• Assess emerging technology and spectrum opportunities, and shape the radio roadmap for next-generation products.
• Provide expert input to proposals, customer reviews, white papers and standards activity.
• Share radio expertise with engineers across the group and help raise engineering practice and documentation standards.

• Degree in electronic engineering, physics or a related discipline (PhD desirable), with 10+ years in radio systems engineering.
• Deep understanding of microwave or mmWave radio systems, with a track record of taking radio products from specification through to field deployment.
• Expertise in link budget analysis, propagation and channel modelling, and radio performance prediction
• Strong working knowledge of phased arrays and beamforming, and of RF front-end and transceiver impairments and how they affect system performance.
• Hands-on experience of RF measurement and test, including spectrum and network analysers, over-the-air and chamber testing, and field trials.
• Proficiency in…