Defence & National Security RF Communications Lead

Main purpose of the job

Radio communications is at the heart of much of what Cambridge Consultants does, and in this role you will be joining an established team of commercial and technical leaders working with clients delivering projects into the Defence and National Security sector.

In this market we architect a range of both standards based and fully custom radio systems for a wide range of applications including low power long range systems and highly flexible high-performance software defined systems. Our work involves significant collaboration with clients, working together to help innovate the best approach to what can be very challenging requirements.

In the early stages of a client engagement, we need to be ambitious and bold, we need to think laterally, apply system design and modelling skills and embrace early experimentation and field measurements, if useful. Overall though, we need to quickly work through the challenges and create a plan to deliver the client the most impactful solution in the most efficient way possible. To do this well, the successful applicant needs to have strong and broad radio communications experience, enjoy spending time client facing, have imagination and most importantly have a strong “can do” attitude and preferably sector experience.

You will often work with our account managers to define work programmes and our commercial approach to help win work. You will be able to work on your own initiative and develop programmes of work from early stage to deployed capability. Developing key client relationships and repeat business built on trust is the cornerstone of our commercial approach and your responsibilities will include an important element of client management during project delivery.

Responsibilities

• Be a strong subject matter expert in the field of RF communication systems
• Work with our broader team to provide input to bids and delivery of projects
• Maintain strong technical relationships with key individuals within client and potential client organisations to enable further sales opportunities
• Interact with teams across the whole of Cambridge Consultants to bring the best technology to our clients to solve their problems

You will also use your strong technical skills to communicate what Cambridge Consultants can deliver to potential clients. Your background skills will also help you to make a significant contribution to the overall direction of development projects, often working on multiple projects at a time.

Our technical team is based in Cambridge and there will be significant travel in the UK.

Minimum requirements

This role is for an experienced radio communication system engineer who has a strong understanding of: radio propagation, radio system design, protocol design and radio system implementations. You will play a leading role in a team of technical and advisory colleagues to solve the client’s problem.

This is a technical delivery role for somebody with great client facing skills. Your career will already have included significant experience in an R&D or design role. You will probably also have had some exposure to the commercial side of projects.

Previous experience of working in a consultancy, government agency or other ‘fee for service’ organisation would be an advantage.

To meet the requirements of this role you will have:

• Excellent radio engineering skills and experience
• A passion for innovative technology solutions and for solving complex problems
• An understanding of what’s important to our clients
• Experience working with clients in the UK Defence & National Security sector

Type of work undertaken by Business Unit

The Defence and Security Business Unit specialises in the design and development of innovative solutions for specific client needs. Often projects start with requirements analysis of complex issues informed by our collective domain knowledge and evolve through technology to develop prototype manufacture and long-term delivery of equipment and services. The projects always incorporate considerable technical challenges. We work across the lifecycle, from research to deployment.

Our workforce has broad expertise in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, sensing and data analytics & signal processing as well as radio frequency engineering, analogue electronics, embedded and high-level software development, mechanical design, physics and mathematics so we can and do develop complete systems for clients.

Communications – and especially secure communications – are central to what we do. Our teams build bespoke communication systems for a wide range of applications, sometimes based on industry standards and sometimes custom from the ground up.

Likewise, radio systems for force protection is a major area, and our experience extends to systems that support people working to defuse Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in the field today – and we are working on future solutions to counter ever-changing threats.

Why Cambridge Consultants?

Cambridge Consultants creates exciting and novel breakthroughs in technology and products. We help our clients achieve the kind of game-changing leap forward that will transform their whole business.

At the heart of what we do are talented and motivated multi-disciplinary teams empowered to create cutting edge technologies and systems to solve difficult problems for our clients.

We recognise and celebrate individual talent and we understand the importance of letting individuals be just that. Our people are here to do the best work of their lives and our job is to provide the platform for them to do it.