Radar Systems Engineer - RF Integration and Test

CHAOS Industries is redefining modern defense with a multi-product portfolio that gives the ultimate advantage—domain dominance. The company's products are powered by Coherent Distributed Networks (CDN™), empowering warfighters, commercial air operators, and border protection teams to act faster, adapt rapidly, and stay ahead of evolving threats.

CHAOS Industries was founded in 2022 and has raised a total of $1 billion in funding from leading investors, including 8VC, Accel, and Valor Equity Partners. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, and London. For more information, please visit www.chaosinc.com .

Role Overview:

Own RF -centric integration, debug, characterization, and validation for radar hardware, subsystems, and test environments

Serve as the Integration and Test team's lead RF engineer across lab, production, chamber, and field environments — ensuring RF chains and test setups produce trustworthy measurements and enable rapid root-cause isolation

Responsibilities:

Lead RF debug, characterization, and acceptance for radar hardware — transmit chains, receive chains, antennas, cables, adapters, switches, filters, LNAs, HPAs, SDRs, and frequency conversion stages — including qualifying new components for integration into radar systems

Diagnose RF failures by selecting and executing the appropriate measurements — S-parameters, VSWR , noise figure, phase noise, IP3 / P1dB , gain/compression, group delay, harmonics/spurs, isolation, and time-domain — and reconcile component-level results against system-level performance such as detection range, sensitivity, and calibration accuracy

Choose the right instrument for the failure mode — VNAs, spectrum analyzers, signal generators, phase noise analyzers, power meters, oscilloscopes, noise figure analyzers, and supporting calibration standards.

Isolate subtle RF issues such as insertion loss drift, intermittent behavior, phase instability, spurious content, compression effects, LO leakage, and timing/frequency drift

Define, configure, and calibrate RF test setups so measurements are repeatable and representative of system operating conditions

Determine whether an observed failure is caused by component defect, cable/connector/interface degradation, calibration error, fixture/setup limitation, environmental effect, or broader system interaction — and connect those measurement results back to radar-level performance impacts

Partner with systems, hardware, software, firmware, and integration engineers to root-cause failures that span RF , digital, timing, and test-setup boundaries

Create RF test procedures, acceptance criteria, troubleshooting guides, and characterization reports that technicians and engineers can execute repeatably

Plan and execute phased array testing in our anechoic chamber, including EIRP , transmit and receive beam patterns, sidelobe levels, beam steering accuracy, element-level calibration, and array calibration verification across the operating band

Stand up and improve RF portions of test racks, bench setups, and STE environments — including automated or semi-automated RF data collection, analysis, and reporting

Work 5 days per week out of our office in Los Angeles (Hawthorne), California.

Minimum Requirements:

Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Physics, Applied Physics, or another related technical field, or equivalent hands-on RF test experience

5+ years of experience in RF test, RF integration, RF validation, radar systems, wireless systems, aerospace/defense systems, or a similar high-performance RF environment

Strong hands-on experience using RF test equipment to debug hardware and characterize components and subsystems

Strong understanding of RF fundamentals including scattering parameters, impedance matching, gain, noise figure, linearity, compression, isolation, phase stability, and frequency-domain behavior

Experience designing and executing RF test plans and interpreting ambiguous measurement results

Ability to connect component-level measurements to system-level behavior and performance degradation

Strong documentation and communication skills, including the ability to explain RF issues clearly to cross-functional teams

High attention to detail and disciplined lab/test practices

Preferred Requirements:

Experience with radar systems, phased array systems, EW systems, SATCOM systems, or other advanced RF /microwave platforms

Hands-on experience with anechoic chamber testing of phased arrays or antennas, including EIRP measurement, near-field/far-field pattern measurement, beam steering verification, and array calibration techniques

Experience diagnosing radar calibration failures or phase-sensitive RF performance issues

Familiarity with phase noise measurement methods, equipment selection, and interpretation of results

Experience characterizing high-power amplifiers, low-noise amplifiers, frequency converters, SDRs…