Radio Frequency

As an Engineering and Physical Science professional, you will use your skills to create the systems and tools that will be used to enhance the operation of intelligence. You will advise, administer and perform scientific projects, such as planning, designing, and constructing specialized equipment, and ensuring adherence to sound engineering and scientific standards and principles. The NSA offers multiple areas of focus for facilities engineers, including computer, architectural, electrical, mechanical, and structural. In addition, we are seeking skills that include computer design, microelectronics, radio frequency design, and systems engineering. Apply your science and engineering skills to protect the nation.

When submitting your application, please ensure that you fully populate all sections of the resume tool with all relevant skills, experience, and education, as the resume entered into the tool will be the primary resume used to evaluate your application.Please do NOT populate the resume tool with - see resume.

Please attach an unofficial copy of your transcripts from all schools attended when applying for this position. Providing a copy of your transcripts is especially critical to ensure the position's coursework obligations have been met. The qualifications listed are the minimum acceptable to be considered for the position.

Degree must be in Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, or a relevant professional technical field.
- For Engineering degrees, the program must be ABET accredited or include specified coursework.*
- For Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, or other relevant degrees, the program must include the specified coursework.*

*Specified coursework includes courses in differential and integral calculus and 5 of the following 18 areas: (a) statics or dynamics, (b) strength of materials/stress-strain relationships, (c) fluid mechanics, hydraulics, (d) thermodynamics, (e) electromagnetic fields, (f) nature and properties of materials/relating particle and aggregate structure to properties, (g) solid state electronics, (h) microprocessor applications, (i), computer systems, (j) signal processing, (k) digital design, (l) systems and control theory, (m) circuits or generalized circuits, (n) communication systems, (o) power systems, (p) computer networks, (q) software development, (r) Any other comparable area of fundamental engineering science or physics, such as optics, heat transfer, or soil mechanics.

Relevant experience must be in the design and engineering of communication systems and/or radio frequency (RF) systems, and/or experience with test equipment.

FULL PERFORMANCE
With a degree in Engineering, entry is with a Bachelor's degree plus 3 years of relevant experience, or a Master's degree plus 1 year of relevant experience, or a Doctoral degree and no experience. With a degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, or a relevant professional technical field, entry is with a Bachelor's degree plus 3 years of relevant experience, or a Master's or Doctoral degree plus 1 year of relevant experience.

SENIOR
Entry is with a Bachelor's degree plus 7 years of relevant experience, or a Master's degree plus 5 years of relevant experience, or a Doctoral degree plus 3 years of relevant experience. Every day, NSA solves unique intelligence problems for scenarios not found anywhere else in the defense of our nation. Are you interested in applying your knowledge to cutting-edge technologies having far-reaching applications and global implications? Do you want the opportunity gain new skills that support fulfilling our country's most critical intelligence needs? If so, RF Engineering, a core component capability development activity within NSA, may be for you

The communications of our foreign adversaries are accelerating and gaining in complexity. NSA's Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and Cybersecurity missions must keep pace with advances in the high speed, multi-functional technologies of communications in order to guard against possible harm to our Nation and stay ahead of potential threats. From short wave radio to sophisticated satellites, transmissions in the RF spectrum crowd the airwaves. NSA's goal is to intercept those signals and collect the ones most likely to produce timely and valuable foreign intelligence needed by US military and national policymakers.

Our highly technical RF workforce is dedicated to keeping pace with advances to address threats to our Nation and our Allies. NSA is responsible for designing, developing, building, and deploying small form factor, mobile systems as well as larger sustained systems. We also build the underlying framework to run systems for data collection and processing to meet national intelligence mission requirements.

NSA is seeking talented colleagues to join world class team of analysts, engineers, researchers and developers who create RF technologies, communications, and capabilities to acquire target signals, condition them for follow-on processing, and deliver end-to-end solutions for survey, collection and emitter location and follow on analysis for advancing global advantage in both information gathering and national defense. RF Engineers work on projects using antenna and receiver design, signals analysis, digital signal processing (software defined radio), end-to-end system design, and emitter location and direction finding techniques in order to design, develop and deploy advanced survey and collection capabilities to propel our mission.

As an RF Engineer, your responsibilities can include:

- Design, build, test and deploy end-to-end RF systems, from the antenna through follow-on processors.
- Design, build, test and deploy communications systems using commercial off the shelf (COTS)/government off the shelf (GOTS) radios, software-defined radios (SDR) and SDR frameworks, as well as field programmable gate array (FPGA) technologies.
- Design, develop, construct, test and maintain hardware and software processing components; typically subsystems of communication, collection, processing or analysis systems.
- Conduct RF site surveys and include results in the design and performance assessments of RF systems.
- Work with and/or lead project teams to satisfy operational requirements for RF systems.
- Analyze results of RF collection in support of national mission requirements
- Lead new advances in RF engineering and push the leading edge of RF communications technologies:
- Antenna theory, design, and fabrication techniques with particular focus on beam-forming technologies - Modulation (BPSK, QPSK, spread spectrum, etc.), demodulation and signal separation techniques
- Low power, space and cooling environments (including embedded systems)
- Commercial telecommunication standards, protocols and topologies
- Compression and other bandwidth optimization techniques
- RF interference detection and mitigation approaches
- Active RF techniques
- Low probability intercept (LPI) and low probability of detection (LPD) techniques
- Service-oriented architectures

When submitting your application, please ensure that you fully populate all sections of the resume tool with all relevant skills, experience, and education, as the resume entered into the tool will be the primary resume used to evaluate your application.Please do NOT populate the resume tool with - see resume.

Please attach an unofficial copy of your transcripts from all schools attended when applying for this position. Providing a copy of your transcripts is especially critical to ensure the position's coursework obligations have been met. The ideal candidate is someone with excellent problem-solving, communication, and interpersonal skills who is able to:

- Work equally well independently and in a team environment
- Effectively address multiple concurrent projects
- Synthesize information to solve complex problems
- Apply knowledge of communications theory to RF engineering problems
- Develop, diagnose, and operate survey and collection systems
- Identify customer needs and validate system design
- Operate in a fast-paced environment

Knowledge and experience in one or more of the following is desired:

- Applying principles, methods, analysis, and applications of radio frequency theory such as radio wave propagation, antenna theory, antenna usage
- Applying principles, methods, and applications of communication theory such as signal processing, decision theory, estimation theory and modulation-demodulation
- Applying concepts, theories, and methods for designing, analyzing, testing, and integrating electrical and communications systems; includes aspects of energy conversion, electrical power generation, and energy transmission, control, distribution, or use
- Applying principles of math, physics, electronics theory, electrical network theory, and control systems to the design, fabrication, and testing of devices that are designed to operate in the radio frequency spectrum
- Hardware design; includes analog (A/D, amplifiers, power supplies, switches), board-level (board layout, circuit analysis, firmware), chip technologies (ASIC, CMOS, VHDL, VLSI), and digital (control logic, control systems, DSP, serial communications)
- Programming (e.g. Assembly Language; high level languages such as JAVA, Matlab, Python, Ruby, Shell Script; and hardware description languages VHDL, and SystemVerilog)
- Computer networking (e.g., communication protocols, distributed systems, Internet of Things, real-time systems, routing and switching)
- Lab equipment (e.g. spectrum analyzers, oscilloscopes, network analyzers, etc.)
- Amateur or HAM Radio clubs
- Open-source Wi-Fi tools

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