RF Systems Engineer
Design the radios, antennas, and link budgets that keep drones commanded and connected under jamming, GPS denial, and contested spectrum.
Courses for this role
RF + comms foundations
Signals, propagation, and the DSP math behind modern radios.
Link budgets, path loss, antenna patterns — the everyday vocabulary of the job.
Bridges textbook DSP to the intuition you need for radio design.
SDR gives you a full radio in software — the fastest way to learn protocols.
The reference for every antenna question you’ll ever field.
Link design + anti-jam
Designing a radio that survives adversarial conditions.
First question every customer asks: at what range does it work?
FHSS + DSSS are the baseline AJ techniques on every tactical radio.
Electronically scanned arrays (Anduril Pulsar, EW jammer apertures, modern satcom terminals) are now common on tactical platforms. AESA fluency distinguishes mid from senior.
EPFL’s DSP course — the math behind modern waveforms.
Cheap, teaches you spectrum discipline, signals you care to recruiters.
Mesh + contested ops
Multi-vehicle, GPS-denied, ECM-heavy environments — where modern drones actually operate.
Tactical mesh is the de facto data link for OAS today.
Tactical Assault Kit is where RF feeds meet operator UIs.
Locating emitters by angle of arrival, time-difference of arrival, or interferometry is core to spectrum awareness, SIGINT collection, and the friendly-vs-hostile RF picture every tactical platform owes its operator.
Every defense customer will ask about spoofing resilience.
Minimum for many cleared RF roles.