RF Engineer

Company Background
Specter’s mission is to help automate the physical world.

Today, we build video sensors with state-of-the-art AI agents that answer any question, anywhere in their environments. Our systems can automatically detect and reason about any physical activity captured on camera, from security incidents (e.g. perimeter intrusion, theft, LPR), to safety monitoring (e.g. PPE detection, injured people), to operational efficiency (e.g. material tracking, congestion monitoring). We offer both long range wireless (1km range) and wired sensor variants to suit any deployment.

Our co-founders Xerxes and Philip are passionate about empowering our partners in the fast approaching world of physical AI and robotics. We are a small, fast growing team who hail from Anduril, Tesla, Uber, and the U.S. Special Forces.

The Role
Specter is hiring an RF Test and Integration Engineer to own the test, qualification, and field deployment infrastructure that proves our RF hardware works; on the bench, on the production floor, and in the field. This role owns the bench characterization, regression coverage, and FCC compliance work that gate every hardware revision, along with the site surveys, RF planning, deployment execution, and post-deploy validation that gate every site we put in the ground. The role sits at the intersection of RF test, embedded firmware, and field deployment.

Responsibilities:

• RF characterization and KPI testing: Run VSA/VSG sweeps of Pout, EVM, OBW, ACLR, noise figure, and sensitivity across temperature, MCS, channel bandwidth, and power.

• Integration testing across the radio chain: Validate chipset, PA front end, matching, and antenna end to end, on the bench and over the air.

• Test automation and infrastructure: Build Python test frameworks driving VSA/VSG, VNA, and spectrum analyzer. Maintain regression suites for firmware and driver releases.

• Cross-domain debugging: When over-the-air performance drops, debug across PHY, MAC, driver, firmware, and RF hardware to find root cause.

• Deployment execution and site validation: Run site surveys, pre-deploy RF planning, link-budget verification, on-site deployment, and post-deploy debug.

• Field data and propagation modeling: Capture link-quality data from deployed sites and feed it into our propagation and coverage planning models.

• Pre-compliance and FCC support: Run Part 15 pre-compliance in-lab, coordinate with external test houses, and debug compliance failures.

Qualifications:

• 3-5 years of RF test and characterization experience on production wireless hardware.

• Hands-on RF test instrumentation: VSA/VSG (LitePoint IQxel or similar preferred), VNA, spectrum analyzer.

• Strong working understanding of modern wireless KPIs: EVM, ACLR, OBW, sensitivity, noise figure, link margin, and what they mean for system performance.

• Python automation experience for test orchestration. You’ve built test frameworks, not one-off scripts.

• Sub-GHz or ISM band experience (902–928 MHz preferred).

• Comfortable in Linux: command line, packet capture (tshark/tcpdump), reading debugfs and driver logs.

• Field deployment experience: site surveys, RF planning against real propagation, path loss model validation.

• Project ownership and timeline discipline, you flag risks early and deliver without being chased.

Nice to Have:

• 802.11 standards knowledge, ideally including 802.11ah / Wi-Fi HaLow.

• Manufacturing floor exposure — understands the gap between bench-works and works-at-rate.

• Experience with PA characterization (linearity, efficiency, EVM tradeoffs).

• FCC Part 15 pre-compliance or full certification experience.

• Familiarity with Morse Micro, Broadcom/Cypress, or similar Wi-Fi chipset ecosystems.