Senior Antenna Engineer

Specter; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Specter in San Francisco is hiring a Senior Antenna Engineer to own radiating hardware for our wireless edge platform. You will lead antenna architecture, design, simulation, prototyping, and validation across ground-based and airborne products.

You will drive full-wave EM simulations (HFSS, CST, FEKO), measurements, and field correlation to ensure reliable, production-ready antennas for our sensors, access points, and mothernodes.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or related field.
• 5+ years designing antennas for production hardware from concept through measurement and volume manufacture.
• Genuine electromagnetics knowledge: radiation mechanisms, impedance, polarization, etc.
• Fluency with full-wave EM simulation tools (HFSS/CST/FEKO).
• Hands-on measurement experience using VNA, spectrum analyzer, signal generator, and chamber work.

Responsibilities

• Lead antenna architecture, design, simulation, prototyping, integration, and validation for ground-based and airborne products.
• Develop antennas for sensors, access points, and mothernodes across sub-GHz to GNSS technologies.
• Drive full-wave EM simulation and correlate with measured performance.
• Design antennas into mechanically constrained enclosures with cameras and other hardware.
• Build out antenna measurement capability end-to-end: return loss, impedance, isolation, gain, patterns, polarization.

Skills

RF design

EM simulation

Antenna testing

VNA measurements

Written communication

Autonomy

Education

Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering

Master's degree in EE (nice to have)

Tools

HFSS

CST

FEKO

Job description

Company Background

Specter's mission is to help automate the physical world.

Today, we build video sensors with state-of-the-art AI agents that answer any question, anywhere in their environments. Our systems can automatically detect and reason about any physical activity captured on camera, from security incidents (e.g. perimeter intrusion, theft, LPR), to safety monitoring (e.g. PPE detection, injured people), to operational efficiency (e.g. material tracking, congestion monitoring). We offer both long range wireless (1km range) and wired sensor variants to suit any deployment.

Our co-founders Xerxes and Philip are passionate about empowering our partners in the fast approaching world of physical AI and robotics. We are a small, fast growing team who hail from Anduril, Amazon, Tesla, Uber, and the U.S. Special Forces.

The Role

Specter is hiring a Senior Antenna Engineer to own the radiating hardware at the edge of our wireless platform; every antenna on every sensor, access point and mothernode we ship. The 1 km wireless range our customers depend on is bought at the antenna, and so is the reliability of the video link that rides on it.

This is a hands-on role with end-to-end ownership: architecture, electromagnetic simulation, prototyping, chamber measurement, certification support, and the correlation between what the model predicted and what a deployed fleet actually does in the field.

What you’ll own

• Lead antenna architecture, design, simulation, prototyping, integration, and validation for ground-based and airborne products.
• Develop antennas for sensors, access points, and mothernodes across technologies such as sub-GHz mesh (902-928 MHz), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, command-and-control, LTE, CBRS, and GNSS.
• Drive full-wave electromagnetic simulation in HFSS, CST, or FEKO: modeling enclosure, radome, chassis, and nearby structures, and correlating predicted performance against measured hardware.
• Design antennas into severely constrained enclosures shared with cameras, compute modules, batteries, cabling, and four other radios.
• Develop multi-radio isolation and coexistence strategy.
• Build out antenna measurement capability end-to-end: return loss, impedance, isolation, efficiency, gain, radiation patterns, polarization, and total radiated performance across bench, chamber, and installed configurations.
• Close the loop from simulation to chamber to field, using link telemetry from hundreds of deployed nodes to make predicted performance match installed performance.
• Drive antennas into production: supplier specification, tolerance and variation analysis, incoming inspection criteria, and the measurements that catch a bad build before it ships.
• Root-cause RF performance issues spanning antenna, radio, mechanical, and environmental domains, using simulation, bench measurement, chamber data, and field telemetry.

What you’ll bring

• Bachelor's or higher in electrical engineering, applied physics, or electromagnetics.
• 5+ years designing antennas for production hardware: you've taken at least one antenna from concept through measurement, certification and volume manufacture.
• Genuine electromagnetics: radiation mechanisms, impedance and matching, efficiency versus directivity, polarization, coupling, ground-plane and counterpoise effects, and the size-bandwidth-efficiency trade for electrically small antennas.
• Fluency in a full-wave EM simulation tool such as HFSS, CST, FEKO or an equivalent platform.
• Hands-on measurementexperience using VNA, spectrum analyzer, signal generator, and chamber work.
• Experience designing into mechanically constrained products such handsets, wearables, IoT devices, vehicles, drones, robots, or mobile devices.
• Comfort with multi-radio platforms and the isolation, coexistence and desense problems that come with them.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical tradeoffs to multidisciplinary stakeholders.
• Ability to operate with significant autonomy, prioritize effectively, and drive technically complex programs to completion.

Nice to have

• Master’s degree or PhD in electrical engineering, electromagnetics, applied physics, or a related field.
• Sub-GHz or ISM band experience (902-928 MHz, 868 MHz), or other work where the antenna is a large fraction of a wavelength.
• FCC Part 15 certification experience, particularly the intentional-radiator rules and the antenna-gain / conducted-power relationship.
• Experience specifying, commissioning or operating an anechoic chamber or antenna range.
• Outdoor and industrial hardware: radomes, environmental sealing, pole and mast mounting, temperature and ingress qualification.
• Scripting for measurement automation and data analysis such as Python or MATLAB.
• Field measurement experience: site surveys, installed-performance characterization, propagation measurement.
• Working directly with antenna suppliers, contract manufacturers and certification labs.