Senior Electronics Engineer

About the role

DroneShield is seeking a Senior Electronic Engineer with relevant experience to join the team in Adelaide, South Australia. The position will report to the Embedded Hardware Manager within the Sensors and Effectors Team.

The Sensors and Effectors team at Droneshield is focused on providing fully operational and qualified modular devices to enable new product development of high-end RF based sensors and effectors. These modules are re-used across various product configurations including man-portable, vehicle mounted and fixed site. Key technical challenges for the electronics aspect of these modules include the design of complex wide-band RF circuitry, high speed digital interface and high-power radio frequency output. DroneShield designs and builds the full signal chain from signal generation to antenna.

The expectations of this role will be focussed on PCBA design and validation of various modules, with an overall objective of providing confidence in product integrations and delivery to the customer. This will include electronic component selection, SCH/PCB design for reliable manufacturing, validation test plan development and execution, manufacturing test procedure development and hardware issue root-case analysis and resolution. More detail can be found below.

Responsibilities, Duties and Expectations 

• Collaborate on the design of new products with other engineers and become a valued member of an autonomous, cross-functional team. Consistently review and improve existing product lines, refining for quality and performance. 
• Liaise with suppliers to support the procurement process and enforce quality control procedures. 
• Building, prototyping, and testing new/existing products. 
• Employing sound industry practices for documentation and QC. 
• Self-managing workload (prioritisation) and workflow to meet key business objectives. 
• Schematic and PCB design using Altium, including maintenance of component database and document templates. 
• Hardware design for manufacturing, EMC and reliability. 
• Proficient with test equipment for validation of high-speed digital and RF interfaces. 
• Manufacturing test specification design and support for production setup & debugging. 
• Hardware design validation planning and execution on both a modular and system level. 
• Hardware laboratory equipment organisation and maintenance. 

Qualifications, Experience and Skills 

• A degree in Electronics Engineering or similar technical field of study or equivalent practical experience.  
• A minimum of 5 years' experience in hardware design, test and production support working within an engineering design team. 
• Knowledge of the following would also be essential: 
• • Practical experience using benchtop test equipment such as high-speed oscilloscope, spectrum analyser and signal generators. 
  • SCH and PCB design using Altium. 
  • Theoretical and practical understanding of PCB layout techniques for high-speed digital and RF circuitry such as DDR RAM, PCIe bus or similar. 
  • Switch-mode power supply design experience. 
  • Hardware design principles for battery power device applications. 
  • Experience with design documentation, drawings and configuration management 
• Knowledge of the following would also be desirable: 
• • Experience with conducting Antenna measurements and characterisation. 
  • Familiarity with the design and implementation of high-power RF amplifier linearization techniques 
  • Hardware design with integrated antennas. 
  • Knowledge of RF and DSP architectures used with Software Defined Radio  
  • Knowledge of mainstream RF modulation techniques. 
  • Knowledge and experience working with Multi-carrier combining. 
  • Experience with antenna design 
  • Familiarity with designing Test plans and procedures  
  • Familiarity with designing for manufacture and production 
  • Familiarity with communication protocols 
  • Familiarity of applicable global and local radio standards 
  • Experience with technical team leadership  
  • Experience in mentoring less experienced engineers. 

Note for recruitment agencies: We do not accept unsolicited candidates from external recruiters unless specifically instructed.