Technical Advisor – Seeker Design, Performance, and Manufacturing

Mach-20; Virginia; Hybrid; USD 100,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Mach-20 is seeking a qualified Technical Advisor in Virginia to support advanced seeker development across various programs. The candidate should possess a Bachelor's degree in engineering or a related field and have at least 5 years of experience in sensor or seeker programs. A strong understanding of RF technologies and manufacturing processes is necessary, along with an active Top Secret clearance.

This advisory role focuses on providing technical insights and assessments throughout the lifecycle of seekers, ensuring they transition from prototypes to scalable production effectively.

Qualifications

• 5+ years supporting advanced sensor, seeker, RF, or guidance system programs.
• Ability to assess complex technical trade spaces and communicate findings to stakeholders.
• Familiarity with defense acquisition, developmental programs, or advanced technology transitions.

Responsibilities

• Support advanced seeker development programs focusing on technical insight and assessment.
• Evaluate trade studies and advise government stakeholders.

Skills

Systems-oriented technical advisor

Active and passive RF knowledge

Manufacturing and industrialization experience

Production-scale electronics insight

Mission-performance trade analysis

Education

Bachelor’s degree in engineering, physics, applied mathematics, or related technical field

Job description

Technical Advisor – Seeker Design, Performance, and Manufacturing

Location:

Northern VA (On-site)

Experience:

5+ years postgraduate experience

Clearance:

U.S. Citizenship & Active Top Secret (TS) clearance are required.

MACH-20 is seeking a Technical Advisor to support advanced seeker development programs spanning seeker architecture, performance analysis, producibility, manufacturing scale‑up, and industrial base assessment. This role is focused on providing high‑end technical insight and independent assessment across the lifecycle of RF and multi‑mode seekers, with particular emphasis on producible, tactically effective systems that can scale beyond low‑volume exquisite solutions.

The ideal candidate combines strong technical expertisein RF seeker hardware and systems engineering with an understanding of how those designs transition into manufacturable, affordable, and scalable production systems. Experience bridging developmental programs, production engineering, industrial base realities, and operational performance trades is highly desired.

This is a SETA/advisory role. The position does not require direct hands‑on design ownership but does require sufficient technical depth to assess architectures, challenge assumptions, evaluate trade studies, and advise government stakeholders across technical and programmatic decision spaces. An active Top Secret clearance is required on day one.

Desired Capabilities &Characteristics

The ideal candidate is a systems-oriented technical advisor capable of connecting: component‑level hardware realities, seeker performance, calibration and test burden, manufacturing scalability, industrial base constraints, and unit cost at scale.

We recognize that candidates possessing deep expertise across all desired areas are exceptionally rare. As such, rather than mastery of every individual area. the strongest candidates may demonstrate a combination of:

• manufacturing and industrialization experience,
• production‑scale electronics insight,
• and mission‑performance trade analysis.

Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, physics, applied mathematics, or related technical field
• Experience supporting advanced sensor, seeker, RF, or guidance system programs
• Ability to assess complex technical trade spaces and communicate findings to government stakeholders
• Familiarity with defense acquisition, developmental programs, or advanced technology transitions

Preferred

• Experience with RF seeker systems
• Experience with multi‑mode seeker architectures
• Experience supporting developmental test and evaluation
• Experience with production engineering or manufacturing scale‑up
• Experience with commercial electronics manufacturing environments
• Experience performing techno‑economic or production scaling analyses
• Experience evaluating industrial base capabilities and constraints
• Advanced degree in relevant technical discipline
• Experience supporting classified programs and rapid prototyping efforts

Areas of Interest

Seeker Architecture and Hardware

• Desired experience includes active and passive RF, EO/IR, multi‑spectral sensing approaches.
• Familiarity with seeker subsystems and component technologies such as antennas and apertures, RF front ends, transmitters & receivers, signal processors, analog‑to‑digital conversion, digital back ends, SWaP, embedded processing architectures, calibration architectures, guidance, navigation, &discrimination functions.
• Experience evaluating technical trades between performance, complexity, cost, size, power, manufacturability, and production scalability is highly valued

Algorithms and Software

• Familiarity with detection/tracking algorithms, signal processing & discrimination techniques, navigation & targeting, sensor fusion, multi‑mode seeker processing, real‑time embedded software considerations, and hardware/software integration impacts on performance and producibility
• The role does not require an algorithm specialist but does require the ability to evaluate algorithmic approaches within the context of system‑level performance and hardware implementation realities. and provide feedback to government stakeholders.

Manufacturing, Production, and Industrialization

• Candidates should understand how advanced seeker technologies transition from prototypes to scalable production.
• Desired experience includes production engineering for seeker hardware; assembly, test, & checkout methodologies; calibration approaches; hardware‑specific performance characterization; qualification &acceptance testing; production yield considerations; Design‑for‑X
• Experience outside the traditional defense seeker industrial base, particularly within higher‑rate commercial electronics production environments such as PCBAs; ICs and semiconductor manufacturing; automated electronics assembly; system integration & test; commercial electronics production operations
• Experience establishing or assessing prototype production lines; LRIP transitions; FRP scale‑up; techno‑economic analyses; production cost modeling; supply chain & industrial base assessments; production planning and scaling strategies.

Performance and Mission Understanding

• Candidates should possess an understanding of seeker operational performance and mission trade spaces, including target acquisition & tracking; search box sizing & search rate trades; frequency, range & detection performance trades; power and input constraints, navigation and guidance considerations, target discrimination, mission class tradeoffs; operational effectiveness versus cost and producibility
• Experience supporting developmental ground and flight testing of seeker systems is highly desirable.
• Mission domain experience may include: Air‑to‑air, Surface‑to‑air, Strike, Counter‑UAS, Maritime, Multi‑mission systems.