Senior Systems Engineer – EA Antenna & Payload Design

Who We Are

Helsing is a defence AI company. Our mission is to protect democracies, achieving technological leadership so open societies can continue making sovereign decisions and controlling their ethical standards. We are an ambitious and committed team of engineers, AI specialists, and customer‑facing programme managers, dedicated to thoughtful development and deployment of powerful AI technologies.

The role

We are developing an advanced airborne platform with an integrated Electronic Attack capability and need an experienced engineer to lead the technical definition, design assessment, and integration of the jammer payload and its associated antenna system. The role sits at the intersection of Electronic Warfare, RF engineering, antenna technology, aircraft integration, mission systems, and systems engineering.

Day‑to‑day responsibilities

• Define system‑level requirements for an airborne jammer payload and its antenna subsystem.
• Translate operational Electronic Attack needs into measurable technical requirements.
• Develop and assess payload and antenna integration architectures.
• Define requirements for:
  • Frequency coverage and instantaneous bandwidth
  • Transmit power, EIRP, and antenna gain
  • Antenna field of regard, beam‑width, and steering performance
  • Polarisation and radiation patterns
  • Simultaneous transmit and receive operation
  • Receiver protection, isolation, and co‑site compatibility
  • Cooling, electrical power, mechanical interfaces, and data interfaces
  • Payload size, weight, and power consumption
  • Platform‑level electromagnetic compatibility
• Analyse antenna placement and spatial coverage on the aircraft; assess installation effects such as airframe shadowing, blockage, reflections, mutual coupling, and radiation‑pattern distortion.
• Evaluate suitable antenna technologies, including phased‑array, AESA, conformal, and distributed antenna concepts.
• Define and manage interfaces between the jammer, antennas, ESM/RWR sensors, mission computer, navigation system, and other aircraft subsystems.
• Perform technical assessments of jammer, RF, and antenna concepts; review specifications, designs, simulations, test results, and compliance evidence.
• Identify technical risks, performance gaps, and integration constraints.
• Support technical design reviews and system architecture decisions.
• Develop link‑budget, coverage, and J/S analyses for representative operational geometries.
• Support modelling and simulation of jammer performance at mission, system, and platform level.
• Define verification and validation strategies for the integrated system.
• Support ground testing, antenna measurements, electromagnetic‑compatibility testing, hardware‑in‑the‑loop testing, and flight‑test activities.
• Coordinate closely with aircraft, mission‑system, Electronic Warfare, mechanical, electrical, thermal and software engineering teams.

You should apply if you have

• A degree in electrical engineering, communications engineering, aerospace engineering, physics or a related technical discipline.
• Several years of professional experience in airborne RF systems, antenna system design, Electronic Warfare or Electronic Attack systems, radar or communications payloads, RF payload integration, or related areas.
• Strong understanding of antenna parameters, radiation patterns, phased arrays, beam steering, and platform installation effects.
• Experience defining and managing requirements for complex RF, mission or defence systems.
• Familiarity with RF link budgets, EIRP, propagation, receiver sensitivity, dynamic range and interference analysis.
• Understanding of jammer‑effectiveness metrics such as J/S, burn‐through range, effective radiated power, power‑on‑target and spatial coverage.
• Ability to assess complete systems rather than focusing on individual components.
• Experience with airborne‑platform integration, environmental qualification or flight‑test activities is highly desirable.
• Familiarity with electromagnetic compatibility, electromagnetic interference, antenna coupling and co‑site analysis is desirable.
• Strong analytical, communication, and technical‑documentation skills.
• Ability to work across multiple engineering disciplines and communicate effectively with technical specialists and programme stakeholders.

What we offer

• Competitive salary and VSOP options
• Relocation support: up to €2,500 and up to four weeks of temporary accommodation
• Learning allowance: €500/£450 per year
• Health & wellness: gym membership and mental‑health support via Nilo.health
• Social: regular company events and monthly social allowances
• Enhanced parental leave: 22 weeks fully paid for primary caregivers and 6 weeks for secondary caregivers
• Family support: 5 days paid family emergency leave, 100% remote work option during pregnancy and phased return to work
• A hands‑on onboarding program that lets you build tooling and applications used across the company from day one (for engineering and AI roles)

Equal opportunities and privacy

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.

Helsing's Candidate Privacy and Confidentiality Regime can be found here.