RF / EMC (Desense) Design Engineer

Syntronic; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 70,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Syntronic seeks an experienced RF/EMC Engineer in San Jose to characterize and resolve desense and EMI issues on consumer electronics. You will integrate EMC concepts across desense, antenna, wireless, and RF engineering while working closely with colleagues on bench, lab, and production environments.

You will travel as needed to customer sites and engage in hands-on measurement, modeling, and collaboration to meet performance targets and schedules.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering (or related field) with 3–5+ years of experience, OR a Master's/PhD with 2+ years.
• Proven track record of solving desense, EMI, and EMC problems on consumer electronic products.
• Strong hands-on bench skills — comfortable owning lab measurement, instrumentation, and debug as a daily focus.

Responsibilities

• Characterize, root-cause, and resolve desense, EMI, and EMC issues across product programs (Wi-Fi, BT/BLE, LTE/5G, GNSS, and other radios).
• Perform hands-on bench and lab work: bring-up, instrumentation setup, near-field/conducted/radiated measurement, and debug.
• Apply EM concepts to solve desense, EMI, RF, antenna, and SI/PI problems in collaboration with antenna and RF engineers.
• Perform noise-source identification, coupling-path analysis, PSD measurement, and mitigation design (shielding, filtering, grounding, layout).
• Use EM simulation and modeling to predict and resolve interference before and during builds.

Skills

Bench skills

EM concepts

Communication

Cross-functional teamwork

Analytical thinking

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering

Master's/PhD in related field

Tools

CST

HFSS

ADS

Python

C/C++

Job description

$70,000 - $120,000 a year

Engagement type: Agency contractor (yellow badge) | Team: Device Connectivity – Wireless Design | Are you ready to be part of a leading global engineering design house specializing in the design and development of state-of-the-art embedded hardware, electronics, and electro-mechanics?

What we’re looking for:

• Highly motivated professionals
• Motivated RF / EMC (Desense) Design Engineer
• Professionals with ability to work both with in-house projects and on-site assignments at our customers’ locations

About the team

The role

As an RF/EMC Engineer, you will characterize, root-cause, and resolve radio desense and electromagnetic interference (EMI/EMC) problems on consumer electronic products. You will connect concepts across EMC design, desense, antenna, wireless communication, and computational electromagnetics to solve complex, novel problems, working closely with antenna, RF, and SI/PI engineers to meet connectivity performance targets on program schedules. You must be responsive, flexible, detail-oriented, and comfortable spending significant time on the bench, able to succeed within an open, collaborative peer environment.

Key responsibilities

• Characterize, root-cause, and resolve desense, EMI, and EMC issues across product programs (Wi-Fi, BT/BLE, LTE/5G, GNSS, and other radios).
• Perform hands-on bench and lab work: prototype bring-up, instrumentation setup, near-field/conducted/radiated measurement, and debug.
• Apply EM concepts to solve desense, EMI, RF, antenna, and SI/PI problems in collaboration with antenna and RF engineers.
• Perform noise-source identification, coupling-path analysis, PSD measurement, and mitigation design (shielding, filtering, grounding, layout).
• Use EM simulation and modeling to predict and resolve interference before and during builds.
• Support DFM and high-volume manufacturing by ensuring desense/EMI robustness carries into production.
• Support sustaining and field-issue investigations related to desense and EMI.
• Help achieve regulatory and performance goals for radio and EMC compliance.

This position may require domestic and international travel.

Basic qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering (or related field) with 3–5+ years of relevant experience, OR a Master's/PhD with 2+ years.
• Proven track record of solving desense, EMI, and/or EMC problems on consumer electronic products.
• Strong hands-on bench skills — comfortable owning lab measurement, instrumentation, and debug as a primary day-to-day focus.
• Strong understanding of EM concepts that help solve desense, EMI, RF, antenna, and SI/PI issues.
• Expert with EM simulation tools such as CST, HFSS, and ADS.
• Fluency in at least one programming/scripting language (e.g., Python, C, C++) for problem solving and data analysis.
• Demonstrated ability to work well within cross-functional teams (PD, Rel, SI/PI, EE).
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Preferred qualifications

• PhD in Engineering, Technology, Science, Mathematics, or a related quantitative field.
• Experience applying optimization or ML techniques (LP/MIP, statistics, machine learning, combinatorial optimization) to EM/wireless design.
• Experience with data mining on large datasets.
• Experience designing antennas.
• Exposure to wireless communication technologies such as LTE/5G, GPS/GNSS, and mmWave.

What you’ll love about us

• Company Culture – outstanding people and a flexible work environment.
• Career Growth Opportunities – being a design house keeps variety in your work. New opportunities happening all the time!
• Global Design House – since Syntronic is a global Design House, you will probably work with in a team with engineers from other Syntronic sites (Canada, Sweden, China, Malaysia, Japan).

Who we are

Syntronic provides our customers a complete portfolio of professional services to support their product development including research & development, new product introduction, manufacturing and aftermarket services. We adopt the latest technologies in electronics design and software development with a pool of technically skilled staff around the world. Among our customers and partners are some of the world’s most technically-intensive businesses and organizations. This pushes us forward in designing to satisfy our customers’ needs with a focus on quality, competence, capacity and continuity.

Syntronic has today over 2000 employees in 8 countries.

Syntronic values diversity in the workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status. If you require accommodation due to a disability at any time during the recruitment and/or assessment process, please contact our recruiting team and we will make all reasonable efforts to accommodate your request.