Senior Systems Engineer – EA Antenna & Payload Design

Who we are

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

The day-to-day

• 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, beamwidth, 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

• Degree in electrical engineering, communications engineering, aerospace engineering, physics, or a related technical discipline.
• Several years of professional experience in one or more of the following areas: 
   - Airborne RF systems 
   - Antenna system design 
   - Electronic Warfare or Electronic Attack systems 
   - Radar or communications payloads 
   - RF payload integration
• 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 only 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 both technical specialists and programme stakeholders. 
   

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. We operate in a domain that has highly unusual technical requirements and constraints, and where robustness, safety, and ethical considerations are vital. You will face unique Engineering and AI challenges that make a meaningful impact in the world

• Our work frequently takes us right up to the state of the art in technical innovation, be it reinforcement learning, distributed systems, generative AI, or deployment infrastructure. The defence industry is entering the most exciting phase of the technological development curve. Advances in our field of world are not incremental: Helsing is part of, and often leading, historic leaps forward

• In our domain, success is a matter of order-of-magnitude improvements and novel capabilities. This means we take bets, aim high, and focus on big opportunities. Despite being a relatively young company, Helsing has already been selected for multiple significant government contracts

• We actively encourage healthy, proactive, and diverse debate internally about what we do and how we choose to do it. Teams and individual engineers are trusted (and encouraged) to practise responsible autonomy and critical thinking, and to focus on outcomes, not conformity. At Helsing you will have a say in how we (and you!) work, the opportunity to engage on what does and doesn’t work, and to take ownership of aspects of our culture that you care deeply about

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 (Nilo.health)

• 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 (affectionately labelled “Infraduction”), in which you will be building tooling and applications to be used across the company. This is your opportunity to learn our tech stack, explore the company, and learn how we get things done - all whilst working with other engineering teams from day one (Specifically for engineering and AI)

These are the core benefits across all locations, there may be additional benefits in certain locations.

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. Please do not submit personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, data concerning your health, or data concerning your sexual orientation.

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