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Head of Seeker Development

Castelion

Castelion

El Segundo, CA, USA
Posted on Sunday, April 21, 2024

About Castelion

Castelion is bringing a new approach to defense development and production: one that focuses on short, iterative design cycles, rapid testing in development, and modern commercial manufacturing strategies for production at scale. We’re designing, building, and testing next generation long range strike weapons systems to give America and its Allies a definitive edge and deter future conflicts.

Head of Seeker Development

As Head of Seeker Development, you will be responsible for the development and optimization of radio frequency (RF) systems, with a focus on enhancing the detection capabilities of our technology. Your role involves driving innovative solutions to improve RF detection performance, collaborating closely with cross-functional teams, and ensuring the reliability and efficiency of RF systems.

Responsibilities

  • Develop solutions for Weapon terminal guidance systems and data links
  • Guide decisions at the program level regarding RF system designs
  • Closely Collaborate with hardware, FPGA, DSP and software engineers to design, produce, test and field RF systems
  • Oversee the development and complete life cycle maintenance of RF hardware
  • Create electromagnetic simulation models of hardware (antennas, filters, PCB layout) to design and evaluate performance
  • Complete field test campaigns of the seeker hardware and perform comprehensive data reviews for internal and external customers.
  • Revise electrical schematics and mechanical drawings for flight-specific purposes, emphasizing manufacturability

Basic Qualifications

  • Bachelor’s degree in computer engineering, electrical engineering, physics, or related field.
  • 5+ years of RF engineering experience
  • Experience with modeling/simulation tools such as (HFSS, CST Studio, Sonnet, ADS, HSPICE, SI-Wave, MATLAB, C/C++, and/or Python)
  • RF test and evaluation experience using industry-standard RF laboratory equipment.
  • The ability to obtain and maintain a DoD clearance

Preferred Skills and Experience

  • Advanced degree in electrical engineering with emphasis in microwave/RF engineering
  • Experience designing RF systems including, automotive radar, rf seekers or wireless communications
  • Experience with RF missile seekers; guidance, navigation, and control systems; target detection; and seeker decision logic.
  • Experience modeling RF and channel impairments such as multipath, phase noise, group delay, fading and nonlinear distortion
  • Experience with basic principles of antenna theory
  • Comprehension of link budgets and analysis pertaining to communication and remote sensing systems
  • Experience with software-defined radios and frameworks, such as GNU Radio

Additional Requirements

  • Willing and able to work extended hours and/or weekends with minimal notification to meet critical deadlines leading up to major milestones.
  • Able to travel up to 30% on an ongoing basis

All employees are granted long-term stock incentives as part of their employment as Castelion. All employees receive access to comprehensive medial, vision, and dental insurance, and the company offers three weeks of paid time off per year.

Leadership Qualities

Bias to Action and Creative Problem Solving. Desire and experience questioning assumptions in ways that lead to break through ideas that are ultimately implemented. Successfully bring in applicable processes/concepts/materials from other industries to achieve efficiency gains. Ability to personally resolve minor issues in development without requiring significant support.

High Commitment, High Initiative. A successful candidate will have a genuine passion for Castelion’s mission and consistently look for ways to contribute to the company’s technical goals and prevent hardware blockers. Ability to work in a fast paced, autonomously driven, and demanding atmosphere. Strong sense of accountability and integrity.

Clear Communicator. Proactively communicates blockers. Trusted in previous roles to be voice of company with regulators, suppliers, gate keepers and customers. Capable of tactfully managing relationships with stakeholders to achieve company-desired outcomes without compromising relationships. Emails, IMs and verbal interactions are logical, drive clarity, and detailed enough to eliminate ambiguity.

ITAR Requirements:

To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Employment with Castelion is governed on the basis of 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.