Active RF Chief Engineer

Honeywell Aerospace; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Honeywell Aerospace seeks a Chief Engineer specializing in RF and Microwave design, covering receiver, transmitter, and frequency synthesizer designs from S-Band to K-Band, including MIMO. The role guides roadmaps, architectures, and strategies for RF design across products and programs, aligning with customer and business needs.

The incumbent leads cross-functional teams, drives improvements, and serves as RF SME, collaborating with suppliers, customers, and regulatory bodies.

Responsibilities

• Be a change leader
• Establish highly collaborative environment across the Honeywell Aerospace organization and Product line leaders
• Guide effective deployment of improvement ideas; champion improvements with project teams, identify and remove roadblocks
• Function as the RF SME for company-wide RF systems and spokesperson with suppliers, customers, and regulatory authorities
• Interact with internal product chief engineers and external customer SMEs when needed
• Lead and advocate value-added certification process changes and improvements; share lessons learned across business and projects
• Multiple global RF design and RF Manufacturing engineers exist; provide design authority, training, and mentorship

Job description

The functional domain for this Chief Engineer position is RF and Microwave design. This covers receiver, transmitter, and frequency synthesizer designs operating from S-Band to K-Band, and Multiple-input Multiple-output (MIMO). The future of Radar applications in Aerospace and Defense domains, to include Electronically Steered Array Systems, Traffic & Surveillance, Radio Navigation Systems (including Next Gen Global Navigation System Multi-Constellation Systems), 5G Radar Altimeter, Data Link Solutions, Defense Sensor Solutions, and SATCOM, requires cost-effective, high-performance RF technology.

KEY RESPONSIBILTIES

Leadership

• Be a change leader
• Establish highly collaborative environment/relationship across the Honeywell Aerospace organization and Product line leaders.
• Guide effective deployment of improvement ideas. Champion improvements with project teams, identify and remove roadblocks.
• Function as the RF SME for company-wide RF systems and spokesperson with suppliers, customers, and regulatory authorities.
• Interact with the internal product chief engineers, and external as needed in discussions with customer subject matter expert (SME) or as the expert to help understand Honeywell's offering in lieu of a customer SME.
• Lead and advocate value-added certification process changes and improvements. Share lessons learned across business and projects.
• Multiple global RF design and RF Manufacturing engineers exist across the many Honeywell products, and the RF Functional Chief would have design authority over them, providing many opportunities to train and mentor individuals as well as develop succession plans for their own role.

Product & Technology Strategy

• Own the roadmap for the RF product and technology portfolios that would feed into the equivalent roadmaps for products like those listed above.
• Drive process infrastructure, architectures and strategies for the RF Design domain, embracing industry trends, customer feedback/needs and competitive intelligence data
• Review and approve RF Architecture and solution proposals ensuring they comply with customer and business requirements and align with internal technology and re-use strategies
• Work across the Honeywell Aerospace organization and be the leader in disseminating competitive intelligence into the domain's roadmaps.
• Identify impactful, transformational RF design improvement ideas
• Reviews and analyzes Voice of the Customer (VOC) and Competitive Intelligence (CI) data to drive RF design strategies.
• Provide oversight and guidance in defining the RF design, modeling, and verification approaches for new products and technologies to address customer needs, competitive challenges, or disruptors.
• Demonstrated debugging skills with experience in Root Cause Corrective Action, and failure analysis processes and presentations.
• Support development of RF product design requirements, qualification, safety and certification strategies, including review and approval of compliance data

Pursuit Strategy

• Provide input to the corresponding product chief for compliance with the product to the customer's requests.
• Ensure product offerings align to the domain's roadmap, utilizing reuse and lessons learned as appropriate.
• Develop integrated solutions to meet stringent requirements, such as electrical performance, cost, or weight requirements, where the current offering may fall short.
• Guide, review, and approve RF design approach/strategies.
• Provide leadership for trade study activities to identify optimum certification approaches as appropriate for RF systems.
• Ensure RF design, qualification and certification strategies alignment with customer and business requirements.

Program Execution

• Be the functional domain expert in product design reviews, providing domain approval for TRL6 exit, PDR & CDRs to the product chief.
• Ensure designs meet CTQs within the functional domain, which includes ensuring the proper activities are in the project plan to test or measure.
• Participate in project phase gate exit reviews for new development programs.
• Provide technical oversight/approval during internal and external RF Design Reviews, ensuring reviews are complete, correct, and timely, and the proper engineering design review checklists are being followed and completed.
• Review and approve RF products qualification plans and test procedures (QTP).
• Support resolution of systemic or critical in-service and production issues, including approval of Root Cause Corrective Action (RCCA)
• Participate in program management reviews and engage with suppliers and customers to drive action plans and closure on critical issues
• Enable effective cross ‑ functional collaboration with Mechanical, Test, Manufacturing, and