Engineering Manager, RF Hardware

Engineering Manager, RF Hardware

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 electronics teams across multiple sites and product lines. This leadership role is critical to ensuring design consistency and high-quality execution across a diverse portfolio of phased arrays, RF front-end modules, up- and down-converters, and software-defined radios.

This position is a highly technical leadership role responsible for delivering well-engineered RF hardware – on schedule – across all product lines. The role provides technical ownership for board- and box-level RF designs 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 designs, architecture reviews, and complex debug activities, ensuring products are scalable, manufacturable, testable, and robust at production volumes.

This front-line engineering management role is the perfect fit for excellent engineers who want to grow their impact. If you are passionate about designing great hardware, have strong interpersonal skills, and are excited by the prospect of designing teams to make more hardware than you can on your own – this is the role for you.

Some engineering management experience is preferred but not required. The successful candidate may be a senior or principal engineer motivated to take the next step in their career.

• Maintain technical integrity and engineering excellence for RF electronics development across the company.
• Establish, mature, scale, and enforce engineer-friendly RF hardware development processes.
• Lead and participate in rigorous architecture and design reviews.
• Apply strong working knowledge of adjacent disciplines to ensure board- and system-level success.
• Contribute directly to board-level RF designs as needed.
• Lead or support complex debug efforts involving RF boards.
• Ensure RF hardware designs are buildable and testable at scale.
• Drive disciplined handoff from engineering to manufacturing.
• Ensure designs meet quality, reliability, and scalability requirements.
• Partner with Supply Chain to ensure component availability and cost awareness.
• Drive design reuse, modular architectures, and platform commonality.

• Build, scale, and lead a high-performing RF hardware engineering team.
• Advocate for realistic schedules while holding the team accountable.
• Lead hiring activities, including writing job descriptions and conducting interviews.
• Establish clear development paths and growth opportunities.
• Address performance issues promptly and constructively.
• Actively close skill gaps through mentorship and targeted hiring.
• Provide one-on-one coaching, mentoring, and deep technical guidance.
• Serve as a key contributor to early-stage engineering execution planning.
• Plan and manage budgets related to staffing and equipment.
• Maintain strong working relationships across Engineering, Quality, and Operations.

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Electrical Engineering required.
• Minimum of 7 years of direct board-level RF hardware engineering experience.
• Demonstrated deep expertise in RF board design.
• Software-defined radio experience preferred.
• Experience supporting design for manufacturability, design for test, and transition from development to production.
• Proven ability to conduct technical reviews and communicate effectively.
• Ability to balance architectural rigor with execution speed.
• Proficiency with RF simulation…