Wireless Network Engineer (RF & Automation)

Hamilton Barnes ?; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Hamilton Barnes is seeking a Wireless Network Engineer (RF & Automation) for a Chicago-based, high-frequency trading network. The role emphasizes keeping a high-performance wireless system visible, healthy and self-improving through monitoring, automation, and design enhancements.

You will design new wireless paths, lead incident responses, coordinate vendors, and develop playbooks to ensure reliable connections between two major exchanges.

Qualifications

• Python for automation and tooling.
• Solid networking fundamentals: routing, VLANs.
• RF fundamentals: wireless signals, antennas.
• Comfortable working under change control in critical environments.
• Able to coordinate vendors, contractors and field crews across time zones.

Responsibilities

• Monitor and alert: build tools in Splunk, Grafana to track signal quality and degradation trends.
• End-to-end troubleshooting: trace traffic across wireless links, APs and user connections.
• Hands-on network design: create wireless paths, manage licensing, improve existing links.
• Lead incident responses: diagnose, fix, document, and feed lessons back into monitoring and design.
• Create runbooks so field crews can respond confidently without live support.

Skills

Python for automation

Networking fundamentals

RF fundamentals

Change control

Vendor coordination

Tools

Grafana

Splunk

Job description

Wireless Network Engineer (RF & Automation)

Chicago, IL (Chicago-based candidates only)

The role

Our client is a high-frequency trading firm running a high-performance wireless network. Signals are beamed between towers, rooftops and data centres, linking two major financial exchanges, where every microsecond counts. Their field and operations team builds and maintains that network, and they now need an engineer to keep it visible and healthy. You'll catch issues before they become outages and automate the system so it gets smarter over time.

It's a highly competitive space where the traditional approach doesn't always cut it, so they want someone who enjoys finding creative solutions. In return, they pay well above market rates.

What you'll do

• Monitoring and alerting: Build and improve tools in Splunk, Grafana and custom code to track signal quality, spot degradation trends and alert before small issues snowball. The aim is to catch problems while they're still data points, not outages.
• End-to-end troubleshooting: When traffic isn't flowing right, trace the issue across wireless links, access points and user connections. That means reading signal data, running packet captures, checking device connectivity and following the trail wherever it leads.
• Hands on the network: Design new wireless paths, work with regulators on licensing and bring new links online. You'll also get more performance out of the existing infrastructure across both exchanges.
• Incident response: When something breaks, you lead the response. Find it, fix it, document it, then feed the lessons back into monitoring and design so it can't break the same way twice.
• Playbooks: Write the runbooks that let field crews and on-call engineers handle situations confidently without you on the phone.

What you'll bring

• Python for automation and tooling. You can build tools other people actually use, not just one-off scripts.
• Solid networking fundamentals: routing, VLANs and how data moves
• RF fundamentals: wireless signals, antennas and interference
• Comfortable working under change control in environments where mistakes matter
• Able to coordinate vendors, contractors and field crews across time zones

Nice to have

• Monitoring tools such as Grafana or Splunk
• Regulatory or licensing experience (FCC, FAA, permitting)
• RF test equipment or optical transport experience

Please note

• Travel to towers, data centres and remote sites, both domestic and international
• On-call rotation across global time zones, including occasional out-of-hours work