Company Overview

Metrea delivers effects-as-a-service to national security partners across five domains and more than a dozen mission areas. These include airborne ISR, electronic warfare, secure communications, aerial refueling, special air missions, aerial firefighting, and advanced simulation. We own the whole stack: designing, building, and operating turnkey capabilities that give our partners decisive, asymmetric advantage against rapidly evolving threats.

Our operating model is built around three interlocking pillars. The Support Groups provide a global shared-service – spanning people, finance, platform, operations, legal, and engagement. This frees up our Core Groups, who develop and own mission capabilities end-to-end, to focus entirely on delivery. The Market Groups apply a regional lens, ensuring that our agile and adaptable capabilities remain aligned to the wicked problems that matter most to our partners across the Americas, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific.

At the heart of our model is a simple but powerful idea: be a true partner with skin in the game. Our partners need effects, not just equipment. By owning the full stack – from the lab to the field – we are able to drive a continuous cycle of innovation that keeps our partners ahead. It's a fast-moving, intellectually demanding environment where talented people are given real responsibility, work on problems that matter, and contribute to an enterprise that is growing quickly and deliberately.

Headquartered in Washington, DC, with facilities across the United States, the United Kingdom, as well as Continental Europe and Asia-Pacific.

Group Overview

Electromagnetic and Cyber Group (EM&C) is responsible for developing flexible and survivable advanced electronic warfare and secure communications equipment while providing the industry’s leading signals intelligence, electronic warfare, and cyber experts. Metrea specialises in signal classification, direction finding, advanced geolocation techniques, and waveform development including waveforms for MANET and LPI/LPD applications. Metrea also develops special purpose radios for government customers and licenses DF and geolocation solutions to multiple OEMs.

The Expeditionary Operations Lab, or EXOLAB, focuses on the rapid development, integration, evaluation and delivery of expeditionary capabilities within the Electromagnetic Warfare and Cyber domain. EXOLAB works across research and development, experimentation, prototyping, systems integration, trials and operational delivery. The team addresses complex customer problems by combining existing technologies, emerging capabilities and internally developed solutions into deployable systems. The lab operates across airborne, land, maritime and dismounted environments, with a strong emphasis on practical engineering, rapid learning and delivering systems that are operationally relevant, supportable and resilient.

Position Summary

We are seeking a Principal RF Engineer to lead and support the research, design, development, integration and delivery of radio-frequency systems for expeditionary Electronic Warfare, signals intelligence, spectrum operations and secure communications capabilities.

The role will be responsible for the RF engineering aspects of prototype and operational systems, including RF architecture, receiver and transmitter chains, antenna systems, signal distribution, filtering, amplification, frequency conversion, interference management and system performance analysis.

The Principal RF Engineer will operate as a senior technical authority within a multidisciplinary team comprising electrical, systems, mechanical, software, cyber and operational specialists. The role will support the full engineering lifecycle, from concept development and technology evaluation through detailed design, integration, verification, trials, deployment and through-life support.

This is a practical, delivery-focused engineering role. The successful candidate will be comfortable moving between theoretical analysis, simulation, laboratory testing, prototype development, platform integration and field trials.

The role will be based either in Lincoln or London, with a longer-term intent to transition the primary location to London if hired initially in Lincoln.

What You'll Do

Design, develop and integrate RF systems for expeditionary Unmanned Systems control, Electronic Warfare, signals intelligence, spectrum-monitoring and secure communications capabilities
Develop RF system architectures covering antennas, receivers, transmitters, amplifiers, filters, frequency conversion, switching and signal distribution
Conduct RF performance analysis, including gain, noise figure, sensitivity, dynamic range, linearity, link budgets and interference assessments
Support rapid R&D, prototyping and technology evaluation, translating operational requirements into practical and deployable RF solutions
Integrate commercial, government and internally developed RF equipment across airborne, vehicle-mounted, maritime, fixed-site and unmanned platforms
Plan and conduct RF testing, characterisation, fault diagnosis, verification and corrective engineering activity
Ensure RF designs consider electromagnetic compatibility, spectrum management, grounding, bonding, shielding, environmental protection and relevant standards
Work closely with electrical, mechanical, software, cyber, systems and operational teammates throughout the engineering lifecycle
Support UK and international trials, demonstrations, installations, commissioning and operational deployments
Provide RF technical leadership, design assurance and clear engineering recommendations to customers, suppliers and internal stakeholders

What You Bring

Degree in RF Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Telecommunications Engineering or a closely related discipline, or equivalent relevant experience
Minimum of seven years’ experience in RF systems design, development, integration, testing or delivery
Experience working with complex RF systems within defence, aerospace, telecommunications, Electronic Warfare, signals intelligence, secure communications or a related sector
Experience with Software Defined Radios, digital RF archit