Radio Frequency Engineer

Radio waves can help a person in Istanbul talk to someone in Indianapolis, transmit a catchy dance tune all the way across the country, and help a Construction Manager direct his crew from afar. While these waves may be powerful, someone must build systems to generate and capture them. A Radio Frequency Engineer does this important work.

As a Radio Frequency Engineer, you might work for a telecommunications company, a computer manufacturing company, or a record company. Anytime anyone needs to shoot out radio waves or capture them, a Radio Frequency Engineer is needed.

At the beginning of the project, you meet with a team of Electrical Engineers and Product Development Managers to discuss what the final product will look like. The systems you build must fit within that product, so size is incredibly important to you. When the meeting ends, you start to develop your system in a series of drawings. Periodically, you compare your drawings with the work of your teammates, just to make sure your design will work.

Once your drawings are complete, the product moves to the manufacturing department, and that team sends you a completed prototype to test. Over and over, you test the prototype to make sure it works the way you intend it to work. If it does not, you tweak your design and ask for a new prototype.

When the product is complete, you write up a document that describes how the system works and how it should be used. Technical language is acceptable, but you try to sprinkle in words that consumers will understand, so they can at least attempt to comprehend the product you’ve made just for them.