Principal RF​/DSP Engineer

Worker Type Regular 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 Principal 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. Given only a newly encountered drone/controller pair and complex-IQ recordings, this engineer will independently frame the problem, generate and rank hypotheses, design the experiment campaign, characterize the waveform, develop the algorithms, implement them in production C++, and validate performance against real-world RF data — without needing the approach handed to them.

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 the practical realities of DF performance in the field — mutual coupling, multipath, platform effects, and coherent multichannel capture. Direction-finding experience is required for this position, not preferred.

Beyond individual targets, this engineer will design and own reusable components within our signal-processing architecture — synchronization libraries, impairment-injection and synthetic-waveform frameworks, replay and validation harnesses — that raise the throughput of the entire team. They will serve as the day-to-day technical lead for other signal-processing engineers: reviewing analysis and code, de-risking approaches, and unblocking stalled investigations. They will inform the technical roadmap by identifying emerging target classes and recommending where the team invests next.

This is a hands-on, individual-contributor technical leadership role. The successful candidate will personally analyze signals, develop algorithms, write and debug production code, and lead laboratory and field validation campaigns. It is not primarily a project-management, vendor-management, or advisory position.

Prior experience with every waveform or protocol we encounter is neither expected nor possible. We are looking for an engineer with exceptional fundamentals and a demonstrated record of taking undocumented wireless systems from first contact to fielded capability, largely on their own initiative.

What you'll do:

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 accuracy against ground truth.

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.

Design array calibration procedures and validate them in conducted, anechoic/open-range, and field settings.

Distinguish target signals from noise, interference, receiver artifacts, and benign emitters in dense RF…