Radio Frequency Engineer Physical Products London; Oxford

Helsing is a defence AI company. Our mission is to protect our democracies. We aim to achieve technological leadership, so that open societies can continue to make sovereign decisions and control their ethical standards. As democracies, we believe we have a special responsibility to be thoughtful about the development and deployment of powerful technologies like AI. We take this responsibility seriously.

We are an ambitious and committed team of engineers, AI specialists and customer-facing programme managers. We are looking for mission-driven people to join our European teams – and apply their skills to solve the most complex and impactful problems. We embrace an open and transparent culture that welcomes healthy debates on the use of technology in defence, its benefits, and its ethical implications.

The role involves designing and integrating the radio frequency systems that make our platforms work in real, contested electromagnetic environments. You will work across the full chain, from antenna and front-end design through to link budgets and EW resilience, and you will be hands-on: designing, building, testing, and fixing real RF hardware.

The day-to-day responsibilities include:

• Designing and specifying RF front-ends, antennas, and associated hardware, reasoning through gain, bandwidth, efficiency, size, and cost trade-offs for a given platform and mission.
• Owning link budget analysis for communications, telemetry, and/or seeker/radar systems, translating range, data rate, and reliability requirements into a defensible RF architecture.
• Working on resilience to a contested electromagnetic environment, jamming, spoofing, and interference, and designing systems that degrade gracefully rather than fail outright.
• Integrating RF systems into the wider electrical architecture, managing grounding, shielding, and EMC considerations so RF performance survives contact with the rest of the platform.
• Getting hands-on with RF test equipment to characterise, debug, and validate real hardware.
• Working closely with electronics, software, and systems engineers to ensure RF subsystems integrate cleanly with power, structure, and the rest of the avionics stack.
• Supporting field testing of RF and communications systems, including range trials and EW/interference testing, and feeding real-world results back into the design.
• Producing clear documentation, link budgets, test reports, and interface definitions that the rest of the team and our customers can rely on.

You should apply if you:

• Have designed and integrated RF systems in a professional engineering context, ideally within aerospace, defence, or another demanding, safety-critical domain.
• Understand RF fundamentals deeply enough to reason from first principles, propagation, antenna theory, link budgets, modulation schemes, noise, and interference.
• Have hands-on experience with RF test and measurement equipment, and are comfortable debugging real hardware.
• Have worked on systems that need to survive a contested or degraded RF environment.
• Can interpret complex datasheets and specifications for RF components and translate them into sound design decisions.
• Collaborate effectively across disciplines and communicate clearly in written and spoken English.

Note: We operate in an industry where women, as well as other minority groups, are systematically under-represented. We encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet all the listed qualifications; ability and impact cannot be summarised in a few bullet points.

Nice to Have:

• Experience with electronic warfare (EW), signals intelligence, or counter-UAS RF systems.
• Experience with radar or seeker RF front-end design.
• Familiarity with SDR (software-defined radio) platforms and associated toolchains.
• Experience with antenna design and simulation tools.
• Exposure to relevant standards and spectrum regulations for defence or aerospace RF systems.

Join Helsing and work with world-leading experts in their fields. Helsing’s work is important. You’ll be directly contributing to the protection of democratic countries while balancing both ethical and geopolitical concerns. The work is unique, operating in a domain with highly unusual technical requirements and constraints, where robustness, safety, and ethical considerations are vital.

What we offer:

• Competitive salary and VSOP options.
• Relocation support: up to €2,500 and 4 weeks temporary accommodation.
• Learning: €500/£450 yearly allowance.
• Health & wellness: gym membership and mental health support.
• Social: regular company events and monthly social allowances.
• Enhanced parental leave: 22 weeks fully paid for primary caregivers & 6 weeks for secondary caregivers.
• Family support: 5 days of paid family emergency leave, 100% remote work option during pregnancy and phased return to work.
• A hands-on onboarding program, where you will be building tooling and applications to be used across the company.

Helsing is an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability or gender identity.