Job Description

Salary: $224,000 - 264,000 per year Requirements:

• Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering or a closely related technical discipline.
• Typically 7+ years of professional experience developing RF hardware or wireless communication systems for production products.
• Strong knowledge of RF receiver architecture, cascaded receiver performance, sensitivity, noise figure, blocking, dynamic range, selectivity, and receiver optimization.
• Proven track record of diagnosing and resolving RF desense issues in complex wireless systems.
• Proven experience building shielding architectures from the RF circuit level through full products, including PCB, connector, cable, enclosure, subsystem, LRU, and product-level shielding.
• Strong grasp of electromagnetic coupling mechanisms such as conducted and radiated emissions, harmonics, intermodulation, passive intermodulation, broadband digital noise, common-mode currents, grounding topology, shielding effectiveness, enclosure resonance, and practical mitigation methods.

• Lead RF desense architecture, analysis, mitigation, validation, and production support across our aircraft, docks, droids, Zipping Points, and future autonomous logistics platforms.
• Define receiver desense budgets and performance targets for next-generation wireless systems.
• Identify and reduce receiver sensitivity loss caused by onboard transmitters, power supplies, processors, high-speed digital interfaces, displays, motors, power electronics, and related subsystems.
• Analyze conducted and radiated interference paths, including broadband noise coupling, harmonics, spurious emissions, blocking, intermodulation, passive intermodulation, and EMC effects.
• Characterize RF coupling through PCBs, cables, antennas, enclosures, mechanical structures, power systems, and wiring harnesses.
• Create mitigation approaches such as shielding, filtering, grounding, PCB layout improvements, clock management, power noise reduction, frequency planning, and antenna isolation enhancements.
• Set RF design rules that reduce desense risk early in development.
• Define our end-to-end electromagnetic shielding architecture across RF ICs, front-end modules, PCB assemblies, connectors, cable harnesses, LRUs, subsystem enclosures, and complete products.
• Develop shielding solutions that manage internal and external RF interference while balancing size, weight, thermal behavior, manufacturability, serviceability, reliability, and cost.
• Specify shielding requirements for RF circuits, mixed-signal electronics, switching power supplies, processors, high-speed digital interfaces, motors, and power electronics.
• Design shielding for connectors and cable interconnects, including termination, grounding, common-mode current control, routing, connector selection, and bonding.
• Build subsystem-level shielding approaches covering enclosure construction, gasket selection, aperture control, seam treatment, venting, conductive coatings, and grounding interfaces.
• Lead product-level shielding architecture so emissions from all subsystems stay below receiver susceptibility limits while multiple transmitters and sensitive receivers operate together.
• Create shielding methods that support concurrent LTE, 5G, GNSS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ADS-B, UAT, ISM radios, telemetry, command-and-control, V2V communications, and future wireless technologies.
• Drive shielding decisions through simulation, lab characterization, near-field scanning, EMI/EMC testing, environmental testing, flight testing, and root-cause analysis.
• Establish shielding standards, verification methods, acceptance criteria, production inspection processes, and long-term design guidance across our hardware platforms.
• Partner with mechanical engineering to develop lightweight, manufacturable shielding that performs across the product lifecycle.
• Define shielding strategies that protect high-precision GNSS receivers from onboard interference and preserve robust positioning during simultaneous multi-radio operation.
• Perform RF system analysis, including receiver sensitivity, cascaded noise figure, blocking performance, dynamic range, interference budgeting, and system margin analysis.
• Work with RF front-end and antenna engineers to improve signal chains, antenna placement, installed performance, and isolation.
• Review PCB layouts, grounding strategies, shielding implementation, stack-up definition, and design-for-manufacturing activities.
• Develop lab validation methods using spectrum analyzers, vector network analyzers, vector signal analyzers, signal generators, near-field probes, OTA chambers, EMI receivers, and conducted RF measurements.
• Plan and execute RF desense characterization, conducted and over-the-air testing, environmental qualification, production verification, and flight testing.
• Investigate RF performance issues using lab measurements, simulation, production data, and structured root-cause analysis.
• Support RF coexistence efforts, including multi-radio interference analysis, wireless integration, radio scheduling strategies, and system-level performance optimization.
• Support regulatory and carrier certification activities, including FCC, CE, ISED, PTCRB, GCF, carrier acceptance, aviation certifications, and international wireless and EMC certifications.
• Work with suppliers and manufacturing partners to define RF acceptance criteria, production test methods, calibration processes, shielding validation, and quality controls.
• Mentor engineers and help build RF desense methods, shielding architectures, debugging approaches, validation standards, and long-term RF performance roadmaps.

• Bluetooth
• Hardware
• Support
• Network
• C++
• Cloud
• Embedded

More:

We are Zipline, the worlds largest and most experienced drone delivery service, on a mission to give all humans equal access to food, medicine, and essential goods anytime, anywhere. We design, build, and operate the worlds largest autonomous logistics system, delivering critical supplies quickly and reliably across four continents. Our work supports leading healthcare systems, governments, retailers, restaurants, and global businesses, and we are looking for practical problem solvers who thrive on real-world challenges, rapid growth, and building systems with meaningful impact. In this Senior RF Desense Engineer role, you will help ensure our wireless systems perform reliably in dense RF environments while supporting innovation at global scale.

last updated 32 week of 2026

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