Antenna Engineering Associate (Fall 2024/Spring 2025)

Description

As an Antenna Engineering Associate at Impulse , your core responsibility will be to design, test, and integrate antenna systems for spacecraft communication systems and GNSS receivers.

You will work with antenna engineers, RF engineers, avionics hardware engineers, mechanical engineers, and others to develop performant and maintainable solutions.

You will contribute to all parts the antenna design lifecycle from initial design inception through prototype and characterization and supporting the design on orbit.

NOTE : This position is on-site required and is for Fall 2024 or Spring 2025 approximate dates of the associate position can be flexible.

Responsibilities

• Work with engineers and vendors to fabricate, test, and integrate antenna designs
• Perform antenna testing using test chambers and analyze test data
• Analyze real-world performance of antennas, debug antenna issues on completed vehicles, and investigate methods to improve vehicle radiated performance
• Support RF and avionics teams by performing EM simulations of PCBs and other vehicle structures for desense analysis, co-existence simulations, and transmission loss
• Contribute to design of antennas for Impulse’s future vehicles
• Work closely with RF engineers and mechanical engineers to integrate antenna designs into RF front ends and vehicle structures
• Optimize antenna designs for power handling, volume and mass constraints, and radiation and thermal environments present on orbit

Minimum Qualifications

• Completed Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related
• 1+ year experience in antenna, RF, or electrical hardware design, bringup, and test, including lab work and university projects
• 2+ years writing Python, MATLAB, or another scripting tool, including time spent in lab and coursework
• Familiarity with electromagnetic concepts such as impedance matching, s-parameters, microwave network analysis, and power handling

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Completed or in progress Master’s Degree or PhD in wireless communications, antenna engineering, or related area of study.
• Experience analyzing antenna systems in the lab (s-parameters, isolation, radiation patterns, propagation effects, etc)
• Familiarity with 3D EM simulation tools such as CST, HFSS, ADS, FEKO, COMSOL, or Cenos
• Experience doing RF system-level testing in the lab using equipment such as spectrum analyzers, power meters, oscilloscopes, and noise figure analyzers.
• Familiarity with a PCB design software such as Altium or Cadence
• Experience designing hardware for launch vehicles, satellites or spacecraft
• Experience working closely with mechanical and vehicle engineers to integrate antenna or electrical designs with brackets and other vehicle hardware

Additional Information :

Compensation bands are determined by role, level, location, and alignment with market data. Individual level and base pay is determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on job-related skills, education, experience, technical capabilities and internal equity.

To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.

S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.

S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here .

Impulse Space is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Impulse Space is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin / ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.

Impulse Space, the in-space transportation company founded by Tom Mueller, is opening access beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) with its fleet of in-space transportation vehicles.

The high-energy Helios vehicle unlocks orbits beyond LEO with its powerful Deneb engine, dropping off payloads in MEO, GEO, heliocentric, lunar, and other planetary orbits.

The flight-proven Mira vehicle uses a nontoxic, high-impulse chemical propulsion system to offer orbital transport, constellation deployment, and precision reentry services to customers throughout LEO.

Led by a team that delivered the most reliable rockets in history, Impulse provides economical and efficient in-space transportation by reliably and rapidly getting customers where they want to go.