The Satellite Applications Catapult is at the heart of the satellite services revolution, driving take-up of space technology and applications to shape, and sustain, the world of tomorrow. We’re driven by how our actions help the organisations we work with, both large and small, bring new services to market. By connecting industry and academia we get new research off the ground and into the market more quickly.

What sort of work would you be involved in?

As a Senior Antenna Design Engineer, you will work with a small team of hardware, software, and mechanical design engineers to assist with the design and development of phase array antenna. The role will cover from specification through to hardware testing, verification and production support.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design of advanced antenna and feed systems in support of next generation products including phased array and reflector products

• Knowledge of Metamaterial, dielectric lenses, useful

• Fabricate and characterise prototypes of antennas, feed systems and RF front ends

• Contribute to development of software and testing of digital beamforming systems to demonstrate full phased array functionality

• Contribute to various aspects of the integration of the antennas into wider systems

• Analyse in-the-field operational RF performance data of units and investigate methods to improve performance and debug issues

• Dependent on experience, supervise a small team, taking responsibility for planning and managing the workload for both you and the team, ensuring robust engineering solutions are in place.

• Documenting various aspects of the projects at different stages.

• Understanding of project plans and help the relevant project manager to implement it.

• Full hardware lifecycle for customer’s products: From system concept, through detailed design and prototyping, test and verification, system integration and support in production.

• Create high quality and robust designs, for fully documenting and recording your work products, keeping them under configuration management and providing plans and progress reports.

• Work closely with Systems, Test and Electronics engineers you will be solving real integration problems on complex systems.

• Conducting large scale tolerance analysis

• Implementing Design for Manufacture

• Design and optimisation of anti-reflection coatings

• Identify and implement new features in our existing tools

• Generating comprehensive results-oriented reports for internal and external purposes

• Propose and work towards creative solution in our optics design process

• Lens/Antenna measurements

• Support and work with consortium partners, documentation, manage small projects, willingness to travel

Skills & Qualifications:

To be considered for this role you will ideally have following key skills and qualification for the role:

• Master’s degree or PhD in electrical engineering with some research/thesis work on RF or antennas.  Bachelor’s degree with relevant experience will also be considered

• 5+ years of research or development experience in the general areas of RF and antennas 

• Proven experience of designing and testing

•  Strong understanding of Electromagnetic theory and principles

• Good knowledge of satellite systems

• 3+ years of experience using one of the 3D EM simulation tools such as CST, HFSS, FEKO, SEMCAD, EMPro, TICRA or XFDTD (CST experience will be preferred)

How we work

We strive to create a high trust environment that enables team members to bring their whole selves to work – this helps to create the foundations of an innovation culture.
Our shared values are critical to this:

• We care - for our people, our partners, and our planet

• We connect - and engage with people and ideas

• We learn - and grow, as people and as an industry

Underpinning this is our belief in great teams, our combined efforts will always deliver outcomes beyond that of any individual providing we are honest through debate, experiment and reflect, and create shared resolutions in support of our purpose. Live these values, work to our principles, take ownership to deliver, and we are certain you will thrive with us.

This job description set outs the skills and experience we believe are needed to be able to do this job but, research also tells us women are much more likely than men to take this list of requirements as absolute and self-select out of the process. If you think you can deliver this role then we want to hear from you, regardless of the boxes you didn’t tick.

Important notice for applicants: We use tools to detect plagiarism and the use of AI or chatbots for applicant answers. If plagiarism, AI use (such as ChatGPT) or similar software are found to have been used in your application you will not be considered for this or future roles within the Satellite Applications Catapult.